Fear God and take your own part

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

FEAR GOD

and

Take Your Own Part

By

Theodore Roosevelt

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright. 1916,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1914,
BY THE WHEELER SYNDICATE, INC.

Copyright, 1915,
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Copyright, 1915 and 1916,
BY THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY

TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA

Over two months have gone by since this book
was published and during those two months af-
fairs have moved rapidly, and at every point the
march of events has shown the need of reducing
to practice every principle herein laid down.

The monotonous succession of outrages upon
our people by the Mexicans was broken by a spec-
tacular raid of Villa into American territory,
which resulted in the death of half a dozen Amer-
ican soldiers and an equal number of civilians.
We accordingly asked Carranza to permit us to
assist him in hunting down Villa and Carranza
grudgingly gave the permission. We failed to
get Villa; we had to fight the Villistas and at
one moment also the Carranzistas ; we lost valu-
able lives, and at this time of writing the expedi-
tion is halted and it is announced at Washington
that it is being considered whether or not it
shall be withdrawn. We have not been able to
scrape together the troops and equipment neces-
sary to punish a single bandit. The professional
pacificists and professional antipreparedness ad-
vocates are invited to consider these facts. We
are told we have kept the peace in Mexico. As a
matter of fact we have twice been at war in Mex-

TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA

ico within the last two years. Our failure to pre-
pare, our failure to take action of a proper sort
on the Mexican border has not averted blood-
shed; it has invited bloodshed. It has cost the
loss of more lives than were lost in the Spanish
War. Our Mexican failure is merely the natural
fruit of the policies of pacificism and anti-pre-
paredness.

Since the first edition of this book was pub-
lished, President Wilson has notified Germany
and has informed Congress that if Germany con-
tinues submarine warfare against merchant and
passenger steamers as she has carried it on for
the last year America will take action. Appar-
ently the first step is to be the sundering of diplo-
matic relations. Such sunderance would, of
course, mean nothing if the submarine war was
continued. Merely to recall our Ambassador if
men, women and children are being continually
killed on the high seas and to take no further
action would be about as effective as the conduct
of a private individual who, when another man
slapped his wife's face, retaliated by not bowing
to the man. Therefore, either Germany will
have to surrender on the point at issue, or this
protest of ours will prove to have meant nothing,
or else there must be a war. Fourteen months
have elapsed since we sent our "strict account-
ability" note to Germany demanding that there

• •

11

TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA

be no submarine warfare that should endanger
the lives of American citizens. She did not be-
lieve that we meant what we said and the war-
fare has gone on. If she now stops, it will be
proof positive that she would have stopped at the
very outset had we made it evident that we meant
what we said. In such case the loss of thousands
of lives of men, women and children will be at
our doors for having failed to make it evident
that we meant what we said. If she does not
stop, then we shall have to go to war or back
down; and in that case it must be remembered
that during these fourteen months — and during
the preceding seven months — we have not pre-
pared in naval, military or industrial matters in
the smallest degree. The peace-at-any-price men,
the professional pacificists shrieked loudly that
to prepare would be to invite war. The Adminis-
tration accepted their view and has not prepared.
The result is that we are near to war. The blind-
est can now see that had we, in August 1914
when the great war began, ourselves begun ac-
tively to prepare, we would now be in a position
such that every one knew our words would be
made good by our deeds. In such case no nation
would dream of interfering with us or of refus-
ing our demands; and each of the warring na-
tions would vie with the others to keep us out of
the war. Immediate preparedness at the outset

iii

TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA

of the war would have meant that there would
never have been the necessity for sending the
"strict accountability" note. It would have
meant that there never would have been the mur-
der of the thousands of men, women and children
on the high seas. It would have meant that we
would now be sure of peace for ourselves. It
would have meant that we would now be ready
to act the part of peacemaker for others.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
Sagamore Hill, April 2^.th, ipi6.

iv

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of
Julia Ward Howe

because in the vital matters fundamentally affecting
the life of the Republic, she was as good a citizen
of the Republic as Washington and Lincoln them-
selves. She was in the highest sense a good wife
and a good mother; and therefore she fulfilled the
primary law of our being. She brought up with de-
voted care and wisdom her sons and her daughters.
At the same time she fulfilled her full duty to the
commonwealth from the public standpoint. She
preached righteousness and she practised righteous-
ness. She sought the peace that comes as the hand-
maiden of well doing. She preached that stern and
lofty courage of soul which shrinks neither from war
nor from any other form of suffering and hardship
and danger if it is only thereby that justice can be
served. She embodied that trait more essential than
any other in the make-up of the men and women of
this Republic — the valor of righteousness.

BATTLE HYMN OP THE REPUBLIC

JULIA WARD HOWE

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of
the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage ivhere the grapes
of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His ter-
rible swift sword,

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred

circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening

dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and

flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows

of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my

grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent

with His heel,
Since God is marching on."

vii

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall
never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His
judgment-seat;

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubi-
lant, my feet,

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across

the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you

and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make

men free,
While God is marching on.

Vlll

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This book is based primarily upon, and mainly con-
sists of, matter contained in articles' I have written in
the Metropolitan Magazine during the past fourteen
months. It also contains or is based upon an article
contributed to the Wheeler Syndicate, a paper sub-
mitted to the American Sociological Congress, and
one or two speeches and public statements. In addi-
tion there is much new matter/ including most of the
first chapter. In part the old matter has been rear-
ranged. For the most part, I have left it unchanged.
In the few instances where what I spoke was in the
nature of prophecy as to what might or would happen
during the last year, the prophecy has been fulfilled,
and I have changed the tense but not the purport of
the statements. I have preferred to run the risk of
occasional repetition rather than to attempt rewriting
certain of the chapters, because whatever of value
these chapters have had lay in the fact that in them I
was applying- eternal principles of right to concrete
cases which were of vital importance at the moment,
instead of merely treating these eternal principles as
having their place forever in the realm of abstract
thought and never to be reduced to action. I was
speaking to and for the living present about the imme-
diate needs of the present.

ix

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The principles set forth in this book are simply the
principles of true Americanism within and without our
own borders, the principles which, according to my
abilities, I have preached and, according to my abil-
ities, I have practised for the thirty-five years since,
as a very young man, I first began to take an active
interest in American history and in American political
life.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
Sagamore Hill, February 3, 1916.

CONTENTS

PAGH

DEDICATION v

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC . . . vii
INTRODUCTORY NOTE . . . . ix

CHAPTER

I. FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART 15

II. WARLIKE POWER — THE PREREQUISITE
FOR THE PRESERVATION OF SOCIAL
VALUES . . . . . -59

III. WHERE THERE Is A SWORD FOR OF-

FENCE THERE MUST BE A SWORD

FOR DEFENCE 76

IV. AMERICA FIRST — A PHRASE OR A FACT ? no

V. INTERNATIONAL DUTY AND HYPHEN-

ATED AMERICANISM .... 138

VI. PEACE INSURANCE BY PREPAREDNESS

AGAINST WAR 165

VII. UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND Is UNCLE

SAM ...... 205

VIII. THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER AND OF
PLAYING CHILDREN HAS BEEN
STILLED IN MEXICO . . . .231

IX. WHEN Is AN AMERICAN NOT AN

AMERICAN? 284

X. THE JAPANESE IN KOREA . . . 293
XI. THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY . 305

xi

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XII. CONCLUSION ..... 343
APPENDIX A. MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS . 351
APPENDIX B. AMERICANISM .... 357

APPENDIX C. LETTER IN REPLY TO A REQUEST
TO SPEAK AT A MASS MEETING ON BEHALF
OF THE ARMENIANS .....

APPENDIX D. RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

xii

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

FEAR GOD AND TAKE
YOUR OWN PART

CHAPTER I
GOD AND TAKE: YOUR OWN PART

READERS of Borrow will recognize in the
heading of this chapter, which I have also
chosen for the title of the book, a phrase used by
the heroine of Lavengro.

Fear God ; and take your own part ! Fear God,
in the true sense of the word, means love God,
respect God, honor God ; and all of this can only
be done by loving our neighbor, treating him
justly and mercifully, and in all ways endeavor-
ing to protect him from injustice and cruelty ;
thus obeying, as far as our human frailty will
permit, the great and immutable law of right-
eousness.

We fear God when we do justice to and de-
mand justice for the men within our own bor-
ders. We are false to the teachings of righteous-
ness if we do not do such justice and demand

FEAR GOD AND TAKE
YOUR OWN PART

CHAPTER I

GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

READERS of Borrow will recognize in the
heading of this chapter, which I have also
chosen for the title of the book, a phrase used by
the heroine of Lavengro.

Fear God ; and take your own part ! Fear God,
in the true sense of the word, means love God,
respect God, honor God; and all of this can only
be done by loving our neighbor, treating him
justly and mercifully, and in all ways endeavor-
ing to protect him from injustice and cruelty ;
thus obeying, as far as our human frailty will
permit, the great and immutable law of right-
eousness.

We fear God when we do justice to and de-
mand justice for the men within our own bor-
ders. We are false to the teachings of righteous-
ness if we do not do such justice and demand

15

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

such justice. We must do it to the weak, and we
must do it to the strong. We do not fear God
if we show mean envy and hatred of those who
are better off than we are; and still less do we
fear God if we show a base arrogance towards
and selfish lack of consideration for those who
are less well off. We must apply the same stand-
ard of conduct alike to man and to woman, to
rich man and to poor man, to employer and em-
ployee. We must organize our social and indus-
trial life so as to secure a reasonable equality of
opportunity for all men to show the stuff that is
in them, and a reasonable division among those
engaged in industrial work of the reward for
that industrial work, a division which shall take
into account all the qualities that contribute to
the necessary success. We must demand hon-
esty, justice, mercy, truthfulness, in our dealings
with one another within our own borders. Out-
side of our own borders we must treat other na-
tions as we would wish to be treated in return,
judging each in any given crisis as we ourselves
ought to be judged — that is, by our conduct in
that crisis. If they do ill, we show that we fear
God when we sternly bear testimony against
them and oppose them in any way and to what-
ever extent the needs require. If they do well,
we must not wrong them ourselves. Finally, if
we are really devoted to a lofty ideal we must

16

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART;

in so far as our strength permits aid them if
they are wronged by others. When we sit idly
by while Belgium is being overwhelmed, and roll-
ing up our eyes prattle with unctuous self-right-
eousness about "the duty of neutrality," we show
that we do not really fear God; on the contrary,
we show an odious fear of the devil, and a mean
readiness to serve him.

But in addition to fearing God, it is necessary
that we should be able and ready to take our
own part. The man who cannot take his own
part is a nuisance in the community, a source of
weakness, an encouragement to wrongdoers and
an added burden to the men who wish to do what
is right. If he cannot take his own part, then
somebody else has to take it for him; and this
means that his weakness and cowardice and inef-
ficiency place an added burden on some other
man and make that other man's strength by just
so much of less avail to the community as a
whole. No man can take the part of any one
else unless he is able to take his own part. This
is just as true of nations as of men. A nation
that cannot take its own part is at times almost
as fertile a source of mischief in the world at
large as is a nation which does wrong to others,
for its very existence puts a premium on such
wrongdoing. Therefore, a nation must fit itself
to defend its honor and interest against outside

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

aggression ; and this necessarily means that in a
free democracy every man fit for citizenship
must be trained so that he can do his full duty
to the nation in war no less than in peace.

Unless we are thorough-going Americans and
unless our patriotism is part of the very fiber
of our being, we can neither serve God nor take
our own part. Whatever may be the case in an
infinitely remote future, at present no people can
render any service to humanity unless as a people
they feel an intense sense of national cohesion
and solidarity. The man who loves other nations
as much as he does his own, stands on a par with
the man who loves other women as much as he
does his own wife. The United States can ac-
complish little for mankind, save in so far as
within its borders it develops an intense spirit
of Americanism. A flabby cosmopolitanism, es-
pecially if it expresses itself through a flabby pa-
cifism, is not only silly, but degrading. It rep-
resents national emasculation. The professors
of every form of hyphenated Americanism are
as truly the foes of this country as if they dwelled
outside its borders and made active war against
it. This is not a figure of speech, or a hyperbolic
statement. The leaders of the hyphenated-
American movement in this country (who dur-
ing the last eighteen months have been the pro-
fessional German- Americans and Austro-Ameri-

18

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

cans) are also leaders in the movement against
preparedness. I have before me a little pamphlet,
circulated by a "German-American" organiza-
tion, consisting of articles written by a German-
American for a paper which claims to be the lead-
ing German paper in Illinois. This pamphlet is
a bitter attack upon the policy of preparedness
for the United States, and a slanderous assault
on those advocating this American policy. It is,
therefore, an effort in the interest of Germany
to turn the United States into a larger Belgium —
an easy prey for Germany whenever Germany
desires to seize it. These professional German-
Americans and Pro-Germans are Anti-American
to the core. They play the part of traitors, pure
and simple. Once it was true that this country
could not endure half free and half slave. To-
day it is true that it can not endure half Ameri-
can and half foreign. The hyphen is incompati-
ble with patriotism.

Patriotism should be an integral part of our
every feeling at all times, for it is merely another
name for those qualities of soul which make a
man in peace or in war, by day or by night, think
of his duty to his fellows, and of his duty to the
nation through which their and his loftiest aspi-
rations must find their fitting expression. After
the Lusitania was sunk, Mr. Wilson stated in
effect that such a time was not the right time

19

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

to stir up patriotism. This statement is entirely
incompatible with having a feeling of deep pa-
triotism at any time. It might just as appropri-
ately have been made by George Washington im-
mediately after his defeat at the Brandywine,
or by Abraham Lincoln immediately after the
surrender of Fort Sumter; and if in either of
these crises our leaders had acted on any such
principle we would not now have any country at
all. Patriotism is as much a duty in time of war
as in time of peace, and it is most of all a duty
in any and every great crisis. To commit folly
or do evil, to act inconsiderately and hastily or
wantonly and viciously, in the name of patriot-
ism, represents not patriotism at all, but a use of
the name to cloak an attack upon the thing. Such
baseness or folly is wrong, at every time and on
every occasion. But patriotism itself is not only
in place on every occasion and at every time, but
is peculiarly the feeling which should be stirred
to its deepest depths at every serious crisis. The
duty of a leader is to lead; and it is a dreadful
thing that any man chosen to lead his fellow-
countrymen should himself show, not merely so
profound a lack of patriotism, but such misun-
derstanding of patriotism, as to be willing to say
in a great crisis what President Wilson thus said
at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania. This
statement, coupled with his statement made about

20

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the same time as to being "too proud to fight,"
furnishes the clue to the Administration's policy
both before and since. This policy made our
great democratic commonwealth false to its
duties and its ideals in a tremendous world crisis,
at the very time when, if properly led, it could
have rendered an inestimable service to all man-
kind, and could have placed itself on a higher
pinnacle of worthy achievement than ever before.
Patriotism, so far from being incompatible
with performance of duty to other nations, is an
indispensable prerequisite to doing one's duty
toward other nations. Fear God; and take your
own part ! If this nation had feared God it would
have stood up for the Belgians and Armenians ;
if it had been able and willing to take its own
part there would have been no murderous assault
on the Lusiiania, no outrages on our men and
women in Mexico. True patriotism carries with
it not hostility to other nations but a quickened
sense of responsible good-will towards other na-
tions, a good-will of acts and not merely of
words. I stand for a nationalism of duty, to
oneself and to others; and, therefore, for a na-
tionalism which is a means to internationalism.
World peace must rest on the willingness of na-
tions with courage, cool foresight, and readiness
for self-sacrifice to defend the fabric of interna-
tional law. No nation can help in securing an

21

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

organized, peaceful and justice-doing world com-
munity until it is willing to run risks and make
efforts in order to secure and maintain such a
community.

The nation that in actual practice fears God
is the nation which does not wrong its neigh-
bors, which does so far as possible help its
neighbors, and which never promises what it
cannot or will not or ought not to perform. The
professional pacifists in and out of office who at
peace congresses pass silly resolutions which can-
not be, and ought not to be, lived up to, and enter
into silly treaties which ought not to be, and can-
not be, kept, are not serving God, but Baal.
They are not doing anything for anybody.1 If
in addition these people, when the concrete case
arises, as in Belgium or Armenia, fear concretely

1See the excellent little book called "Is War Diminishing?"
by Woods and Baltzly. The authors deal, as they necessarily
must if truthful deal, with the mischievous activities of those
professional pacifists among whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie has
attained an unhappy prominence : activities which in this country
for the last five years have worked nothing but evil, and very
serious evil, to our nation and to humanity at large, and to all
genuine movements for the promotion of the peace of righteous-
ness. The writers instance Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler as
presenting in typical manner the shams and perversions of fact
upon which the professional pacifists rely for their propaganda,
and remark that these pacifists, "who pride themselves on having
the superior moral point of view, openly disregard the truth,"
and ask "these professors of ethics, law and justice, these presi-
dents of colleges, these moral educators, if morality is not neces-
sarily bound up with truth." The pacifist movement in this
country has not only been one of extreme folly and immorality,
but has been bolstered by consistent and unwearied falsification
of the facts, laudation of shallow and unprincipled demagogues,
and condemnation of the upright public servants who fearlessly
tell the truth.

22

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

to denounce and antagonize the wrongdoer, they
become not merely passive, but active agents of
the devil. The professional pacifists who ap-
plauded universal arbitration treaties and disar-
mament proposals prior to the war, since the war
have held meetings and parades in this country
on behalf of peace, and have gone on silly mis-
sions to Europe on behalf of peace — and the
peace they sought to impose on heroes who were
battling against infamy was a peace conceived in
the interest of the authors of the infamy. They
did not dare to say that they stood only for a
peace that should right the wrongs of Belgium.
They did not dare to denounce the war of aggres-
sion by Germany against Belgium. Their souls
were too small, their timidity too great. They
were even afraid to applaud the war waged by
Belgium in its own defence. These pacifists have
served morality, have shown that they feared
God, exactly as the Pharisees did, when they
made broad their philacteries and uttered long
prayers in public, but did not lift a finger to
lighten the load of the oppressed. When Mr.
Wilson and Mr. Bryan made this nation shirk
its duty towards Belgium, they made us false to
all our high ideals; for they acted and caused
this government to act in that spirit of commer-
cial opportunism which refuses to do duty to oth-
ers unless there is in it pecuniary profit for one-

23

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

self. This combination of mean timidity and
mean commercial opportunism is peculiarly odi-
ous because those practising it have sought to
hide it by profuse outbursts of wordy sentimen-
tality and loud professions of attachment to im-
possible and undesirable ideals. One of the be-
setting sins of many of our public servants (and
of not a few of our professional moralists, lay
and clerical) is to cloak weakness or baseness of
action behind insincere oratory on behalf of im-
practical ideals. The true servant of the people
is the man who preaches realizable ideals; and
who then practises what he has preached.

Moreover, even as regards the pacifists who
genuinely desire that this nation should fear God,
it is to be remembered that if the nation cannot
take its own part, the fact that it fears God will
be of no practical consequence to any one. No-
body cares whether or not the feeling of the Chi-
nese people is against international wrongdoing;
for, as China is helplessly unable to take her own
part, she is in practise even more helpless to take
the part of any one else and to secure justice
and mercy for any one else. The pacifists who
are seeking to China fy the United States are
not only seeking to bring the United States to
ruin, but are also seeking to render it abso-
lutely impotent to help upright and well-behaved
nations which are oppressed by the military

24

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

power of unscrupulous neighbors of greater
strength.

The professional pacifists, the leaders in the
pacifist movement in the United States, do par-
ticular harm by giving well-meaning but unin-
formed people who do not think deeply what
seems to them a convincing excuse for failure
to show courage and resolution. Those who
preach sloth and cowardice under the high-
sounding name of "peace" give people a word
with which to cloak, even to themselves, their
failure to perform unpleasant duty. For a man
to stand up for his own rights, or especially for
the rights of somebody else, means that he must
have virile qualities : courage, foresight, willing-
ness to face risk and undergo effort. It is much
easier to be timid and lazy. The average man
does not like to face death and endure hard-
ship and labor. He can be roused to do so if
a leader of the right type, a Washington or
Lincoln, appeals to the higher qualities, includ-
ing the stern qualities, of his soul. But a leader,
or at least a man who holds a leader's place,
earns praise and profit unworthily if he uses his
gift of words to lull well-meaning men to sleep,
if he assures them that it is their duty to do the
easy and selfish thing, and furnishes them high-
sounding phrases with which to cover ignoble
failure to perform hard and disagreeable duties.

25

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Peace is not the end. Righteousness is the
end. When the Saviour saw the money-changers
in the Temple he broke the peace by driving
them out. At that moment peace could have
been obtained readily enough by the simple proc-
ess of keeping quiet in the presence of wrong.
But instead of preserving peace at the expense
of righteousness, the Saviour armed himself
with a scourge of cords and drove the money-
changers from the Temple. Righteousness is
the end, and peace a means to the end, and some-
times it is not peace, but war which is the proper
means to achieve the end. Righteousness should
breed valor and strength. When it does breed
them, it is triumphant; and when triumphant, it
necessarily brings peace. But peace does not nec-
essarily bring righteousness.

As for neutrality, it is well to remember that
it is never moral, and may be a particularly mean
and hideous form of immorality. It is in itself
merely unmoral; that is, neither moral nor im-
moral; and at times it may be wise and expedi-
ent. But it is never anything of which to be
proud; and it may be something of which to be
heartily ashamed. It is a wicked thing to be
neutral between right and wrong. Impartiality
does not mean neutrality. Impartial justice con-
sists not in being neutral between right and
wrong, but in finding out the right and uphold-

26

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

ing it, wherever found, against the wrong.
Moreover, submission to an initial wrong means
that all protests against subsequent and lesser
wrongs are hypocritical and ineffective. Had
we protested, in such fashion that our protest was
effective, against what was done in Belgium by
Germany, and against the sinking of the Lusi-
tania by Germany, we could have (and in such
case we ought to have) protested against all sub-
sequent and minor infractions of international
law and morals, including those which interfered
with our commerce or with any other neutral
rights. But failure to protest against the first
and worst offences of the strongest wrongdoer
made it contemptible, and an act of bad faith,
to protest against subsequent and smaller mis-
deeds; and failure to act (not merely speak or
write notes) when our women and children were
murdered made protests against interference
with American business profits both offensive
and ludicrous.

The pacifists have used all kinds of argu-
ments in favor of peaceful submission to, or
refusal to prepare against, international violence
and wrongdoing, and among others the very an-
cient arguments based upon the supposed teach-
ing of the New Testament against war. In the
first place, as I have already pointed out, this
argument is quite incompatible with accepting

27

the lesson taught by the action of the Saviour
in driving the money-changers from the Temple ;
not to mention, incidentally, that the duty of pre-
paredness has rarely been put in stronger form
than by St. Luke in the direction that "He that
hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy
one."

In the next place, the plea is merely an in-
stance of the adroit casuistry that can twist iso-
lated teachings of the Gospels in any required
direction. As a matter of fact, the Gospels do
not deal with war at all. During the period
they covered there was no war in Judea, and no
question arising from the need of going to war.
The precepts and teachings upon which the pa-
cifists rely apply not to war, but to questions
arising from or concerning individual and mob
violence and the exercise of the internal police
power. In so far as sincere and logical paci-
fists are concerned, they recognize this fact.
There are schools of pacifists who decline to
profit by the exercise of the police power, who
decline to protect not merely themselves, but
those dearest to them, from any form of out-
rage and violence. The individuals of this type
are at least logical in their horror even of just
war. If a man deliberately takes the view that
he will not resent having his wife's face slapped,
that he will not by force endeavor to save his

28

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

daughter from outrage, and that he disapproves
of the policeman who interferes by force to save
a child kidnapped by a black-hander, or a girl
run off by a white-slaver, then he is logical in
objecting to war. Of course, to my mind, he
occupies an unspeakably base and loathsome po-
sition, and is not fit to cumber the world — in
which, as a matter of fact, he exists at all only
because he is protected by the maintenance by
others of the very principle which he himself re-
pudiates and declines to share.

Such a position I hold to be as profoundly im-
moral as it is profoundly unpatriotic. But, at
least, the men holding it are trying logically to
apply the principles which they profess to fol-
low. Messrs. Bryan, Jordan, Ford, and the other
professional pacifists, however, are either in-
sincere in their denunciation of war, or else must
announce that the same principle which makes
them denounce a just war entered into for the
sake of the welfare of the nation as a whole,
also makes them denounce the man who, by force,
endeavors to protect his daughter against in-
famy, or the woman who opposes her feeble
strength to the brutality of the kidnapper of her
child. Either these gentlemen, as regards their
own families, approve of tame submission to
kidnapping and white slavery, and disapprove of
suppression of kidnapping and white slavery by

29

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the police, or else they are either thoroughly
unintelligent or else thoroughly dishonest in their
denunciation of national preparedness and of
readiness to enter into just war on behalf either
of ourselves or of others.

Let us beware of confusing names with things.
The fuglemen of President Wilson have kept
praising him because, forsooth, he has "kept us
out of war." Every now and then one of them
reverses his praise, and says that in any event
President Wilson could not have gone to war,
because war can only be declared by Congress.
But as a matter of fact, President Wilson has
gone to war, both with Hayti and with Mexico.

This is a matter of deeds, not of words. When
our armed forces attack the chief seaport city
of a foreign country, as we did in the case both
of Mexico and of Hayti, and take it by violence,
after conflicts in which scores of our own men
and either scores or hundreds of our opponents
are killed and wounded, the act is one of war.
It may be successful war like that which Mr. Wil-
son nerved himself to wage with tiny Hayti —
for Mr. Wilson was not afraid of Hayti. It may
be utterly ineffective war, as in the case of Mr.
Wilson's little war with Mexico. But both were
wars; and each was waged without any Con-
gressional action whatever. Mr. Wilson sent the
fleet down to Vera Cruz, and took it in order to

30

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

get a salute for the flag. The men wearing the
United States uniform, who carried out his com-
mand, suffered a considerable loss of life and
inflicted a greater loss of life. He then brought
our forces away without achieving the object
he had in view. His little war was an ignoble
war, and he was beaten in it. But it was a war.

Some of his defenders now say that, although
defeated in the avowed purpose of the war, he
succeeded as regards the unavowed purpose,
which was to drive out Huerta in the interests
of Villa. This is, of course, a confession that
their statements on behalf of Mr. Wilson are
untrue, that he has not kept the country at peace,
but has put it into a war, not to serve any public
purpose, but to gratify his personal feelings. It
is, of course, a statement absolutely incompati-
ble with Mr. Wilson's own claim that he did not
intervene in Mexico. Therefore, these admirers
of Mr. Wilson come to his defence by vociferat-
ing what he asserts to be contrary to the truth.

As a matter of fact, in this case they are cor-
rect. Mr. Wilson has more than once interfered
— to use his own scholarly and elegant phrase-
ology, "butted in" — by making war in Mexico.
He never did it, however, to secure justice for
Americans or other foreigners. He never did
it to secure the triumph of justice and peace
among the Mexicans themselves. He merely did

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

it in the interest of some bandit chief, whom at
the moment he liked, in order to harm some other
bandit chief whom at the moment he disliked.
Under such circumstances his methods of action,
and his defence of his action, are worthy of a
Byzantine logothete — but not of an American
statesman who is true to the traditions of Wash-
ington and Lincoln, and an heir to the valor
shown by the soldiers of Grant and of Lee.

Mr. Wilson has been President when the
urgent need of the nation was for action. He
has met the need purely by elocution. A friend,
writing to me last Christmas Eve, remarked that
he had just found in Cymbeline "in anticipation
of the gentleman in the White House":

"Prithee have done,

And do not play in wench-like words with that
Which is so serious."

Peace is not a question of names. It is a ques-
tion of facts. If murders occur in a city, and
if the police force is so incompetent that no
record is made of them officially, that does not
interfere with the fact that murders have been
committed and that life is unsafe. In just the
same way, if lives are taken by violence between
nations, it is not of the slightest consequence
whether those responsible for the government
of the nation whose citizens have lost their lives

32

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

do or do not assert that the nation is at peace.
During the last three years we have been techni-
cally at peace. But during those three years
more of our citizens have been killed by Mexi-
cans, Germans, Austrians and Haytians than
were killed during the entire Spanish War. It
is true that the American citizens killed during
the past three years have been mostly non-com-
batants, including women and children, although
many men wearing the national uniform have
also been killed, some of them on American soil.
But the fact that women and children are killed
instead of full-grown men in uniform surely in-
creases rather than diminishes the horror. We
have had a great many more citizens killed dur-
ing this time of alleged peace, and thanks to the
activities of the emissaries of foreign govern-
ments with the torch and the bomb on our own
soil, we have had much more American property
destroyed, than was the case during the open
war with Spain ; and whereas, thanks to the ab-
ject quality of Mr. Wilson's tameness, no benefit
whatever, to us or to mankind at larg*e, has
come from this loss of life and destruction of
property during the last three years, the short
war with Spain brought incalculable benefits to
Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, not to speak
of ourselves.

On February I2th it will be a year since the
33

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

bined unworthy submission to wrongs against
ourselves, with selfish refusal to keep our word
and do right by others. Under the sixth article
of the Constitution treaties are "the Supreme law
of the land." The Hague Conventions were
treaties of this kind. They included a guaranty
from Germany that she would not violate the
territory of neutral nations (including the
territory of Belgium) and a guaranty by Bel-
gium that if an attempt was made to violate
her territory she would fight to prevent the vio-
lation. Germany broke her solemn promise to
us, and offended against the Supreme law of
our land. Belgium kept her solemn promise made
by her to us, to Germany, to France, Russia and
England. We shirked our duty by failing to take
any action, even by protest, against the wrong-
doer and on behalf of the wronged, by permitting
this violation of our law, of the law which we
guaranteed, of the "supreme law of the land,"
and by announcing through our President that
we would be "neutral in thought as well as in
deed" between the oppressor and the oppressed.
We have been equally signal in our remiss-
ness to prepare for our own defence. It is our
highest duty thus to prepare, and in manful fash-
ion to pay the cost of preparation. Seven years
ago we were relatively to the rest of the world
far better prepared than ever before in our his-

36

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

tory. Our navy was in combined size and ef-
ficiency the second in the world. The Philip-
pines had been pacified, Mexico was orderly and
peaceful, and the Hague Conventions, if actively
enforced and treated as binding by peaceful and
law-abiding nations, would have regulated the
conduct of war, circumscribed its limits, and
minimized the chance of its occurrence. Under
such conditions our regular army was of suf-
ficient size (provided the work of improving its
efficiency was steadily continued, as had been the
case during the preceding seven years) — for the
navy was our first and principal line of defence.
Although as President I had called the attention
of Congress and of the people to the Swiss sys-
tem of universal service as a model for us as well
as other democracies, there did not at that time
seem any sufficient justification for military
alarm. But what has happened during the last
year and a half has forced all reasonably far-
sighted men to understand that we are living in
a new world. We have let our navy deteriorate
to a degree both shameful and alarming. We
have shown by our own conduct when the Hague
Conventions were violated that all such treaties
are utterly worthless, as offering even the small-
est safeguard against aggression. Above all, the
immense efficiency, the utter ruthlessness, and
the gigantic scale of the present military opera-

37

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

bined unworthy submission to wrongs against
ourselves, with selfish refusal to keep our word
and do right by others. Under the sixth article
of the Constitution treaties are "the Supreme law
of the land." The Hague Conventions were
treaties of this kind. They included a guaranty
from Germany that she would not violate the
territory of neutral nations (including the
territory of Belgium) and a guaranty by Bel-
gium that if an attempt was made to violate
her territory she would fight to prevent the vio-
lation. Germany broke her solemn promise to
us, and offended against the Supreme law of
our land. Belgium kept her solemn promise made
by her to us, to Germany, to France, Russia and
England. We shirked our duty by failing to take
any action, even by protest, against the wrong-
doer and on behalf of the wronged, by permitting
this violation of our law, of the law which we
guaranteed, of the "supreme law of the land/'
and by announcing through our President that
we would be "neutral in thought as well as in
deed" between the oppressor and the oppressed.
We have been equally signal in our remiss-
ness to prepare for our own defence. It is our
highest duty thus to prepare, and in manful fash-
ion to pay the cost of preparation. Seven years
ago we were relatively to the rest of the world
far better prepared than ever before in our his-

36

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

tory. Our navy was in combined size and ef-
ficiency the second in the world. The Philip-
pines had been pacified, Mexico was orderly and
peaceful, and the Hague Conventions, if actively
enforced and treated as binding by peaceful and
law-abiding nations, would have regulated the
conduct of war, circumscribed its limits, and
minimized the chance of its occurrence. Under
such conditions our regular army was of suf-
ficient size (provided the work of improving its
efficiency was steadily continued, as had been the
case during the preceding seven years) — for the
navy was our first and principal line of defence.
Although as President I had called the attention
of Congress and of the people to the Swiss sys-
tem of universal service as a model for us as well
as other democracies, there did not at that time
seem any sufficient justification for military
alarm. But what has happened during the last
year and a half has forced all reasonably far-
sighted men to understand that we are living in
a new world. We have let our navy deteriorate
to a degree both shameful and alarming. We
have shown by our own conduct when the Hague
Conventions were violated that all such treaties
are utterly worthless, as offering even the small-
est safeguard against aggression. Above all, the
immense efficiency, the utter ruthlessness, and
the gigantic scale of the present military opera-

37

tions show that we need military preparedness
on a scale never hitherto even dreamed of by
any American statesman.

Eighteen months have gone by since the great
war broke out. It needed no prescience, no re-
markable statesmanship or gift of forecasting
the future, to see that, when such mighty forces
were unloosed and when it had been shown that
all treaties and other methods hitherto relied
upon for national protection and for mitigating
the horrors and circumscribing the area of war
were literally "scraps of paper," it had become
a vital necessity that we should instantly and
on a great and adequate scale prepare for our
own defence. Our men, women and children —
not in isolated cases, but in scores and hundreds
of cases — have been murdered by Germany and
Mexico; and we have tamely submitted to
wrongs from Germany and Mexico of a kind to
which no nation can submit without impairing
its own self-respect and incurring the contempt
of the rest of mankind. Yet during these eigh-
teen months not one thing has been done. The
President in his Message to Congress four
months after the beginning of the war actually
took ground against such preparedness. At this
moment we are no stronger by one soldier or
one sailor, by one cannon or by one ship, because
of anything that has been done during these

38

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

eighteen months in view of the frightful world
calamity that has befallen. At last the popular
feeling has grown to be such that the President
has paid to it the tribute of advocating an inef-
ficient and belated half -measure of preparedness.
But even so, not one thing has yet been done.
Everything is still in the future, and there is
not the slightest sign that the urgency of the case
has been recognized. Nine-tenths of wisdom is
being wise in time. Never in the country's his-
tory has there been a more stupendous instance
of folly than this crowning folly of waiting eigh-
teen months after the elemental crash of nations
took place before even making a start in an ef-
fort— and an utterly inefficient and insufficient
effort — for some kind of preparation to ward off
disaster in the future.

If President Wilson had shown the disinter-
ested patriotism, courage and foresight de-
manded by this stupendous crisis I would have
supported him with hearty enthusiasm. But his
action, or rather inaction, has been such that it
has become a matter of high patriotic duty to
oppose him. No man can support Mr. Wilson
without being false to the ideals of national duty
and international humanity. No one can support
Mr. Wilson without opposing the larger Ameri-
canism, the true Americanism. No man can
support Mr. Wilson and at the same time be

39

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

really in favor of thoroughgoing preparedness
against war. No man can support Mr. Wilson
without at the same time supporting a policy of
criminal inefficiency as regards the United States
navy, of shortsighted inadequacy as regards the
army, of abandonment of the duty owed by the
United States to weak and well-behaved nations,
and of failure to insist on our just rights when
we are ourselves maltreated by powerful and un-
scrupulous nations.

It has been a matter of sincere regret to me
to part company with so many German friends
who believe that I have been unkind to Germany.
It has also been a matter of sincere grief to me
to find that my position has been misunderstood
and misrepresented and resented by many up-
right fellow-citizens to whom in the past I have
been devoted, but who have let their loyalty to
Germany, the land from which they themselves
or their forefathers came, blind them to their
loyalty to the United States and their duty to hu-
manity at large. I wish explicitly and emphati-
cally to state that I do not believe that this is
the attitude of any but a minority of American
citizens of German birth or descent. Among my
stanchest friends are many men of German
blood, who are American citizens and nothing
else. As I have elsewhere said, I could name
an entire administration from the President

40

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

down through every member of the Cabinet,
every man of whom would be of German blood,
but an American and nothing else; an adminis-
tration which I and all those like me could follow
with absolute confidence in dealing with this or
any similar crisis.

The German element has contributed much
to our national life, and can yet do much more
in music, in literature, in art, in sound construc-
tive citizenship. In the greatest of our national
crises, the Civil War, a larger percentage of our
citizens of recent German origin, than of our
citizens of old revolutionary stock, proved loyal
to the great ideals of union and of liberty. I am
myself partly of German blood. I believe that
this country has more to learn from Ger-
many than from any other nation — and this as
regards fealty to non-utilitarian ideals, no less
than as regards the essentials of social and in-
dustrial efficiency, of that species of socialized
governmental action which is absolutely neces-
sary for individual protection and general well-
being under the conditions of modern industrial-
ism. But in this country we must all stand to-
gether absolutely without regard to our several
lines of descent, as Americans and nothing else;
and, above all, we must do this as regards moral
issues. The great issues with which we must
now deal are moral even more than material;

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

and on these issues every good American should
be with us, without the slightest regard to the
land from which his forefathers came.

As regards the German- Americans who assail
me in this contest because they are really mere
transported Germans, hostile to this country and
to human rights, I feel not sorrow, but stern
disapproval. I am not interested in their attitude
toward me; but I am greatly interested in their
attitude toward this nation. I am standing for
the larger Americanism, for true Americanism;
and as regards my attitude in this matter, I do
not ask as a favor, but challenge as a right,
the support of all good American citizens, no
matter where born, and no matter of what creed
or national origin. I do not in the least desire
any support for or approval of me personally;
but I do most emphatically demand such support
and approval for the doctrines of the larger
Americanism which I advocate.

When some fourteen months ago I published
under the title of "America and the World War,"
a little volume containing what I had publicly
said and urged during the first months of the
war, I took substantially the ground that I now
take. But there is infinitely more reason for
taking such ground now.

At that time Germany had sinned against civi-
lization by her conduct toward Belgium and her

42

method of carrying on the war, and I held it to
be our duty in accordance with our solemn cove-
nant to take whatever action was necessary in
order to show that our nation stood for the right
and against the wrong, even when the wrong was
triumphant. But our duty is far stronger now.
For many months Germany has waged war
against us, the war being conducted by openly
authorized agents of Germany on the high seas
and within our land against our munition plants
by men who have been shown to be the direct
or indirect agents of Germany — and whom
as matter of fact no human being in his senses
denies to be such. What I say of Germany ap-
plies in less degree to Austria, which has be-
come the instrument of Germany's ambition and
her agent in wrongdoing.1

1 In a recent excellent pamphlet Mr. Gustav Bissing, who, like
myself, is an American of non- English blood (I believe mainly
German blood), speaks of the activities of the hyphenated pro-
fessional German-Americans and Austrian-Americans in part
as follows : "Are we really a nation, a people, a fused product
of the melting-pot, or are we, after all, a polyglot conglomerate
of unfused nationalities? . . . What we need is a leader, one
who walks ahead, some one with prescience, imagination and
courage. The chord which is to reverberate in American ears
throughout the land must be struck by a master-musician not
afraid of the foreign vote. 'Gott erhalte Franz der Kaiser' and
'Die Wacht am Rhein' are both inspirating national anthems.
But just now I am longing for the simple strains of simon-pure
'Yankee Doodle.' " One of the best Americans I know — a man
both of whose parents were born in Germany — writes me from
South America as follows: "We of the U. S. are considered
here a more or less spiritless, invertebrate sort of humanity,
because of the insults we have accepted from Germany, and
our inaction in Mexico. At the present time it is far safer and
more pleasant for an American to remain home. No man's life

43

I preach antipathy to no nation. I feel not
merely respect but admiration for the German
people. I regard their efficiency and their de-
voted patriotism and steady endurance as
fraught with significant lessons to us. I believe
that they have permitted themselves to be utterly
misled, and have permitted their government to
lead them in the present war into a course of
conduct which, if persevered in, would make
them the permanent enemy of all the free and
liberty-loving nations of mankind and of civili-
zation itself. But I believe that sooner or later
they will recover their senses and make their
government go right. I shall continue to cherish
the friendliest feelings toward the Germans in-
dividually, and for Germany collectively as soon
as Germany collectively comes to her senses. No
nation is always right, and very few nations are
always wrong. It is our duty to judge each
nation by its conduct in the given crisis which
must at the moment be faced. Since this country
became a nation, there have been occasions when
it has so acted as to deserve the condemnation of

is safe in the hands of a man like Wilson ! If the people of the
U. S. A. don't overwhelmingly drive the peace-at-any-price party
out of office at the next election, they will lose practically all
standing in foreign countries, and will have to face the discon-
tent and humiliation of their own most high-minded citizens.
We do not need more wealth in the U. S. A. to-day; our crying
need is manhood ! The American people must awake to a
realization of duty and put a stop to the abuses which now
threaten our honor and our national integrity."

44

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

mankind — and as regards slavery its action was
persevered in for many years. During the same
period England, France, and Russia have each
of them and all of them at one time or another
so behaved as to merit from us condemnation
and antagonism; and, at certain periods in our
history, during the Napoleonic wars, for instance,
and during our own Civil War, the attitude of
the ruling classes in both France and England
was unfriendly to our country. In 1898 Ger-
many was hostile to us, and all the nations of
Continental Europe followed suit, whereas Eng-
land, and England alone, stood by us. In the
Revolution France was our only real friend.
During the time of the Civil War Russia was the
only European nation which showed us any sym-
pathy whatever.

When as a nation we displayed a purpose to
champion international piracy in the interest of
slavery we deserved to be condemned. But in the
end we did well, and proved our worth by our en-
deavor, and when we championed orderly free-
dom in Cuba, the Philippines, and Panama, we
deserved to be praised. In 1878 it was right to
champion Russia and Bulgaria against Turkey
and England. For exactly the same reasons we
ought now to champion Russia and England and
Servia against Turkey and Bulgaria. A century
ago the sympathies of humanity ought to have

45

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

been with the Germany of Koerner and Andreas
Hofer against Napoleonic France; and to-day
they ought to be with the Belgian and French
patriots against the Germany of the Hohenzol-
lerns. To oppose England now because in 1776
we fought England is as foolish and wicked as
it would be now to oppose Germany because in
that same Revolutionary War masses of German
mercenaries fought against us. I have certainly
never hesitated, and at this moment am not hesi-
tating, to condemn my own country and my own
countrymen when it and they are wrong. I
would just as unhesitatingly condemn England,
France, or Russia if any one of them should in
the future behave as Germany is now behaving.
I shall stand by Germany in the future on any
occasion when its conduct permits me so to do.
We must not be vindictive, or prone to remember
injuries; we need forgiveness, and we must be
ready to grant forgiveness. When an injury is
past and is atoned for, it would be wicked to
hold it in mind. We must do justice as the facts
at the moment demand.

Abraham Lincoln, with his far-seeing vision
and his shrewd, homely common sense, set forth
the doctrine which is right both as regards in-
dividuals and as regards nations when he said:
"Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand
with him while he is right and part with him

46

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

when he goes wrong. To desert such ground
because of any company is to be less than a man,
less than an American." As things actually are
at this moment, it is Germany which has offended
against civilization and humanity — some of the
offences, of a very grave kind, being at our own
expense. It is the Allies who are dedicated to
the cause and are fighting for the principles set
forth as fundamental in the speech of Abraham
Lincoln at Gettysburg. It is they who have
highly resolved that their dead shall not have
died in vain, and that government of the people,
by the people, and for the people shall not perish
from the face of the earth. And we have stood
aside and, as a nation, have not ventured even
to say one word, far less to take any action, for
the right or against the wrong.

To those persons who fifty years ago cried for
peace without regard to justice or righteousness,
for the peace of cowardice, Abraham Lincoln an-
swered in words that apply to-day. These words
appropriately answer the sinister or silly crea-
tures— including especially the silly or sinister
Americans — who now likewise demand a peace
acceptable only to the fool, the weakling, and the
craven — a peace that would consecrate triumph-
ant wrong and leave right bound and helpless.
Said Lincoln, "The issue before us is distinct,
simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can

47

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

only be tried by war and settled by victory. The
war will cease on the part of this government
whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those
who began it. ... We accepted war rather than
let the nation perish. With malice towards none,
with charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on
to finish the work we are in, and to do all which
may achieve a just and lasting peace among all
nations."

Surely, with the barest change of a few words,
all that Lincoln said applies now to the war the
Allies are waging on behalf of orderly liberty
and self-government for the peoples of mankind.
They have accepted war rather than let the free
nations of Europe perish. They must strive on
to finish the work they are in, and to achieve a
just and lasting peace which shall redress wrong
and secure the liberties of the nations which have
been assailed.

We Americans must pay to the great truths
set forth by Lincoln a loyalty of the heart and
not of the lips only. In this crisis I hold that we
have signally failed in our duty to Belgium and
Armenia, and in our duty to ourselves. In this
crisis I hold that the Allies are standing for the
principles to which Abraham Lincoln said this
country was dedicated; and the rulers of Ger-
many have, in practical fashion, shown this to

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

be the case by conducting a campaign against
Americans on the ocean, which has resulted in
the wholesale murder of American men, women,
and children, and by conducting within our own
borders a campaign of the bomb and the torch
against American industries. They have car-
ried on war against our people; for wholesale
and repeated killing is war — even though the
killing takes the shape of assassination of non-
combatants, instead of battle against armed men.

It is a curious commentary on the folly of the
professional pacifists among my fellow-country-
men that they should applaud a "peace" to be
obtained by conceding triumph to these wrong-
doers. It is a no less curious commentary on
the attitude of the rulers of Germany that at
the moment when they are forcing the Belgian
people to aid in the manufacture of materials
of war to be used against their own countrymen,
they are also protesting against the United States
manufacturing such materials for the use of
those who are seeking to free Belgium from the
dreadful brutality of which it has been the victim.

It is always hard to make a democracy pre-
pare in advance against dangers which only the
farsighted see to be imminent. Even in France
there were wellr-meaning men, who but a few
years ago did not realize the danger that hung
over their land, and who then strove against ade-

49

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

quate preparedness. In England, which was by
no means in the same danger as France, there
were far more of these men — just as there are
far more of them in our own country than in
England. Almost all these men, both in France
and in England, are now doing everything in
their power to atone for the error they formerly
committed, an error for which they and their
fellow countrymen have paid a bitter price of
blood and tears. In our land, however, the men
of this stamp have not learned these lessons,
and with evil folly are endeavoring to plunge
the nation into an abyss of disaster by preventing
it from so preparing as to remove the chance of
disaster. France has learned her lesson in the
hard school of invasion and necessity; England
has been slower to learn, because the war was
not in her home territory; and our own politi-
cians, and to a lamentably large degree our own
people, are fatuously unable to profit by what
has happened, because they lack the power to
visualize either the present woe of others or the
future danger to themselves.

France has shown a heroism and a loftiness
of soul worthy of Joan of Arc herself. She was
better prepared than either of her allies, per-
haps because the danger to her was more im-
minent and more terrible, and therefore more
readily understood; and since the first month of

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the war she has done everything that it was in
human power to do. The unity, the quiet reso-
lution, the spirit of self-sacrifice among her peo-
ple— soldiers and civilians, men and women — are
of a noble type. The soul of France, at this mo-
ment, seems purified of all dross; it burns like
the clear flame of fire on a sacred tripod. French-
men are not only a gallant but a generous race;
and France realizes that England and Russia
are now both bearing their share of the burden
in the same spirit that France herself has shown.

Russia's sufferings have been sore, but it is
not possible to overestimate Russia's tremendous
tenacity of purpose and power of endurance.
Russia is mighty, and her future looms so vast
that it is hardly possible to overstate it. The
Russian people feel this to be their war. Rus-
sia's part in the world is great, and will be
greater ; it is well that she should stand valiantly
and stubbornly for her own rights ; and as a firm
and ardent friend of the Russian people may I
add that Russia will stand for her rights all the
more effectively when she also stands for the
rights of Finn and Pole and Jew; when she
learns the lesson that we Americans must also
learn — to grant every man his full rights, and
to exact from each man the full performance of
his duty.

The English navy was mobilized with a ra-

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

pidity and efficiency as great as that of the Ger-
man army. It has driven every warship, except
an occasional submarine, and every merchant-
ship of Germany off the seas, and has kept the
ocean as a highway of life not only for England,
but for France, and largely also for Russia. In
all history there has been no such gigantic and
successful naval feat accomplished as that which
the seamen and shipwrights of England have to
their credit during the last eighteen months. It
was not originally expected that England would
have to do much on the continent; and although
her wisest sons emphatically desired that she
should be ready to do more, yet this desire repre-
sented only a recognition of the duty owed by
England to herself. To her Allies she has more
than kept the promise she has made. She has
given Russia the financial assistance that none
but she could give; her money effort has been
unparalleled in all previous history. Eighteen
months ago no Frenchman would have expected
that in the event of war England would do more
than put a couple of hundred thousand men in
France. She has already put in a million, and
is training and arming more than double that
number. Her soldiers have done their duty
fearlessly and well; they have won high honor
on the fields of horror and glory; they have
shown the same gallantry and stubborn valor

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

that have been so evident in the armies of France
and Russia. Her women are working with
all the steadfast courage and self-sacrifice that
the women of France have shown. Her men
from every class have thronged into the army.
Her fisher folk, and her seafarers generally, have
come forward in such numbers that her fleet is
nearly double as strong as it was at the outset
of the war. Her mines and war factories have
steadily enlarged their output, and it is now
enormous, although many of the factories had
literally to build from the ground up, and the
very plant itself had to be created. Coal, food,
guns, munitions, are being supplied with sus-
tained energy. From across the sea the free
Commonwealths of Canada, Australia, New Zea-
land, and South Africa, and the Indian Empire,
have responded with splendid loyalty, and have
sent their sons from the ends of the earth to
do battle for liberty and civilization. Of Can-
ada I can speak from personal knowledge. Can-
ada has faced the time that tries men's souls,
and with gallant heroism she has risen level to
the time's need. Mighty days have come to her,
and she has been equal to the mighty days.
Greatness comes only through labor and cour-
age, through the iron willingness to face sorrow
and death, the tears of women and the blood of
men, if only thereby it is possible to serve a lofty

53

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

ideal. Canada has won that honorable place
among the nations of the past and the present
which can only come to the people whose sons
are willing and able to dare and do and die at
need. The spirit shown by her sister-common-
wealths is the same. High of heart and un-
daunted of soul the men and women of the
British Islands and of the whole British Empire
now front the crisis that is upon them.

Having said all this, let me point out, purely
for the instruction of our own people, that, ex-
cepting always as regards her navy, England
has been much less effective than she should have
been in the use of her strength during these first
eighteen months of war. This is because she had
not prepared in advance, because she had not ac-
cepted the advice of Lord Roberts. If all her
sons had been trained under a system of uni-
versal service, and if it had been clearly under-
stood that in war time neither undue profit-mak-
ing by capitalists nor striking by workingmen
would be tolerated — for universal service means
that each man is to serve the nation, and not him-
self, in whatever way is necessary — there would
have been no invasion of Belgium, and no long-
drawn and disastrous war. Nine-tenths of wis-
dom consists in being wise in time! Universal
training in time of peace may avert war, and
if war comes will certainly avert incalculable

54

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

waste and extravagance and bloodshed and pos-
sible ultimate failure. Let us of the United
States learn the lesson. Let us inaugurate a sys-
tem of obligatory universal military training, and
instill into our sons the spirit of intense and ex-
clusive loyalty to the United States. Let ours
be true Americanism, the greater Americanism,
and let us tolerate no other. Let us prepare our-
selves for justice and efficiency within our own
border during peace, for justice in international
relations, and for efficiency in war. Only thus
shall we have the peace worth having.

Let this nation fear God and take its own part.
Let it scorn to do wrong to great or small. Let
it exercise patience and charity toward all other
peoples, and yet at whatever cost unflinchingly
stand for the right when the right is menaced
by the might which backs wrong. Let it further-
more remember that the only way in which suc-
cessfully to oppose wrong which is backed by
might is to put over against it right which is
backed by might. Wanton or unjust war is an
abhorrent evil. But there are even worse evils.
Until, as a nation, we learn to put honor and
duty above safety, and to encounter any hazard
with stern joy rather than fail in our obliga-
tions to ourselves and others, it is mere folly
to talk of entering into leagues for world peace
or into any other movements of like character.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

The only kind of peace worth having is the peace
of righteousness and justice; the only nation that
can serve other nations is the strong and valiant
nation; and the only great international policies
worth considering are those whose upholders be-
lieve in them strongly enough to fight for them.
The Monroe Doctrine is as strong as the United
States navy, and no stronger. A nation is ut-
terly contemptible if it will not fight in its own
defence. A nation is not wholly admirable un-
less in time of stress it will go to war for a great
ideal wholly unconnected with its immediate ma-
terial interest.

Let us prepare not merely in military matters,
but in our social and industrial life. There can
be no sound relationship toward other nations
unless there is also sound relationship among our
own citizens within our own ranks. Let us in-
sist on the thorough Americanization of the
newcomers to our shores, and let us also insist
on the thorough Americanization of ourselves.
Let us encourage the fullest industrial activity,
and give the amplest industrial reward to those
whose activities are most important for securing
industrial success, and at the same time let us
see that justice is done and wisdom shown in
securing the welfare of every man, woman, and
child within our borders. Finally, let us remem-
ber that we can do nothing to help other peo-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

pies, and nothing permanently to secure material
well-being and social justice within our own bor-
ders, unless we feel with all our hearts devotion
to this country, unless we are Americans and
nothing else, and unless in time of peace by
universal military training, by insistence upon
the obligations of every man and every woman
to serve the commonwealth both in peace and
war, and, above all, by a high and fine prepared-
ness of soul and spirit, we fit ourselves to hold
our own against all possible aggression from
without.

We are the citizens of a mighty Republic con-
secrated to the service of God above, through
the service of man on this earth. We are the
heirs of a great heritage bequeathed to us by
statesmen who saw with the eyes of the seer and
the prophet. We must not prove false to the
memories of the nation's past. We must not
prove false to the fathers from whose loins we
sprang, and to their fathers, the stern men who
dared greatly and risked all things that freedom
should hold aloft an undimmed torch in this wide
land. They held their worldly well-being as dust
in the balance when weighed against their sense
of high duty, their fealty to lofty ideals. Let us
show ourselves worthy to be their sons. Let us
care, as is right, for the things of the body; but
let us show that we care even more for the things

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

of the soul. Stout of heart, and pledged to the
valor of righteousness, let us stand four-square
to the winds of destiny, from whatever corner of
the world they blow. Let us keep untarnished,
unstained, the honor of the flag our fathers
bore aloft in the teeth of the wildest storm, the
flag that shall float above the solid files of a
united people, a people sworn to the great cause
of liberty and of justice, for themselves, and for
all the sons and daughters of men.

CHAPTER II

WARLIKE; POWER — THE PREREQUISITE FOR THE
PRESERVATION OF SOCIAL VALUES

IN December last I was asked to address the
American Sociological Congress on "the ef-
fect of war and militarism on social values." In
sending my answer I pointed out that infinitely
the most important fact to remember in connec-
tion with the subject in question is that if an un-
scrupulous, warlike, and militaristic nation is not
held in check by the warlike ability of a neigh-
boring non-militaristic and well-behaved nation,
then the latter will be spared the necessity of
dealing with its own "moral and social values"
because it won't be allowed to deal with anything.
Until this fact is thoroughly recognized, and the
duty of national preparedness by justice-loving
nations explicitly acknowledged, there is very
little use of solemnly debating such questions as
the one which the sociological congress assigned
me — which, in detail, was "How war and militar-
ism affect such social values as the sense of the
preciousness of human life; care for child wel-
fare; the conservation of human resources; up-

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per-class concern for the lot of the masses; in-
terest in popular education ; appreciation of truth-
telling and truth-printing; respect for personality
and regard for personal rights." It seems to me
positively comic to fail to appreciate, with the ex-
ample of Belgium before our eyes, that the real
question which modern peace-loving nations have
to face is not how the militaristic or warlike
spirit within their own borders will affect these
"values," but how failure on their part to be able
to resist the militarism of an unscrupulous neigh-
bor will affect them. Belgium had a very keen
sense of the "preciousness of human life" and
of "the need for the care of child welfare and
the conservation of human resources," and there
was much "concern" by the Belgian "upper
classes for the lot of the masses," great "interest
in popular education and appreciation of truth-
telling and truth-printing and a high respect for
personality and regard for personal rights." But
all these "social values" existed in Belgium only
up to the end of July, 1914. Not a vestige of
them remained in 1915. To discuss them as re-
gards present-day Belgium is sheer prattle, sim-
ply because on August 4, 1914, Belgium had not
prepared her military strength so that she could
put on her frontiers at least half a million thor-
oughly armed and trained men of fighting spirit.
In similar fashion the question of the internal

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WAR AND SOCIAL VALUES

reformation of China at this moment is wholly
secondary to the question whether any China
will remain to be reformed internally. A Chi-
nese gentleman wrote me the other day that he
had formerly been absorbed in plans for bring-
ing China abreast of the modern movement, but
that the events of the past year had shown him
that what he really ought to be absorbed in was
the question whether or not China would be able
by military preparation to save itself from the
fate of Korea. Korean "social values" now have
to be studied exclusively through a Japanese me-
dium. At this moment the Armenians, who for
some centuries have sedulously avoided milita-
rism and war, and have practically applied ad-
vanced pacifist principles, are suffering a fate,
if possible, worse than that of the Belgians; and
they are so suffering precisely and exactly be-
cause they have been pacificists whereas their
neighbors, the Turks, have not been pacifists
but militarists. They haven't the vestige of a
"social value" left, to be "affected" by militarism
or by anything else.

In the thirteenth century Persia had become a
highly civilized nation, with a cultivated class of
literary men and philosophers, with universities,
and with great mercantile interests. These lit-
erary men and merchants took toward the reali-
ties of war much the same attitude that is taken

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

in our own country by gentlemen of the stamp
of Messrs. David Starr Jordan and Henry Ford.
Unfortunately for these predecessors of the mod-
ern pacifists, they were within striking distance
of Genghis Khan and his Mongols; and, as of
course invariably happens in such a case, when
the onrush came, the pacifists' theories were
worth just about what a tissue-paper barrier
would amount to against a tidal wave. Russia
at that time was slowly struggling upward
toward civilization. She had become Christian.
She was developing industry, and she was strug-
gling toward individual freedom. In other
words, she was in halting fashion developing the
"social values" of which the foregoing extract
speaks. But she had not developed military ef-
ficiency ; she had not developed efficiency in war.
The Mongols overwhelmed her as fire over-
whelms stubble. For two centuries the Russians
were trodden under foot by an alien dominion
so ruthless, so brutal, that when they finally
shook it off, all popular freedom had been lost
and the soul of the nation seared by torment and
degradation; and to this day the scars remain
on the national life and character. The chief
difficulties against which Russia has had to
struggle in modern times are due ultimately to
the one all-essential fact that in the early part
of the thirteenth century she had not developed

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the warlike strength to enable her to hold her
own against a militaristic neighbor. The Rus-
sian Jew of to-day is oppressed by the Russian
Christian because that Christian's ancestor in
the thirteenth century had not learned efficiency
in war.

There are well-meaning people, utterly incap-
able of learning any lesson taught by history,
utterly incapable even of understanding aright
what has gone on before their very eyes during
the past year or two, who nevertheless wish to
turn this country into an occidental China — the
kind of China which every intelligent Chinaman
of the present day is seeking to abolish. There
are plenty of politicians, by no means as well
meaning, who find it to their profit to pander
to the desire common to most men to live softly
and easily and avoid risk and effort. Timid and
lazy men, men absorbed in money-getting, men
absorbed in ease and luxury, and all soft and
slothful people naturally hail with delight any-
body who will give them high-sounding names
behind which to cloak their unwillingness to
run risks or to toil and endure. Emotional phil-
anthropists to whom thinking is a distasteful
form of mental exercise enthusiastically cham-
pion this attitude. The faults of all these men
and women are of a highly non-militaristic and
unwarlike type; and naturally they feel great

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

satisfaction in condemning misdeeds which are
incident to lives that they would themselves be
wholly unable to lead without an amount of toil
and effort that they are wholly unwilling to un-
dergo. These men and women are delighted to
pass resolutions in favor of anything with a
lofty name, provided always that no demand is
ever made upon them to pay with their bodies to
even the smallest degree in order to give effect
to these lofty sentiments. It is questionable
whether in the long run they do not form a less
desirable national type than is formed by the
men who are guilty of the downright iniquities
of life; for the latter at least have in them ele-
ments of strength which, if guided aright, could
be used to good purpose.

Now, it is probably hopeless ever to convince
the majority of these men except by actual disas-
ter that the course they follow is not merely
wicked, because of its subordination of duty to
ease, but from their own standpoint utterly short-
sighted— as the fate of the Armenians and the
Chinese of the present day shows. But I believe
that the bulk of our people are willing to follow
duty, even though it be rather unpleasant and
rather hard, if it can be made clearly evident
to them; and, moreover, I believe that they are
capable of looking ahead, and of considering the
ultimate interest of themselves and their chil-

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WAR AND SOCIAL VALUES

dren, if only they can be waked up to vital na-
tional needs. The members of Sociological So-
cieties and kindred organizations, and philan-
thropists, and clergymen, and educators, and all
other leading men, should pride themselves on
furnishing leadership in the right direction to
these men and women who wish to do what is
right.

The first thing to do is to make these citizens
understand that war and militarism are terms
whose values depend wholly upon the sense in
which they are used. The second thing is to
make them understand that there is a real
analogy between the use of force in international
and the use of force in intra-national or civil
matters; although of course this analogy must
not be pushed too far.

In the first place, we are dealing with a mat-
ter of definition. A war can be defined as vio
lence between nations, as the use of force be-
tween nations. It is analogous to violence
between individuals within a nation — using vio-
lence in a large sense as equivalent to the use of
force. When this fact is clearly grasped, the
average citizen will be spared the mental con-
fusion he now suffers because he thinks of war
as in itself wrong. War, like peace, is properly
a means to an end — righteousness. Neither war
nor peace is in itself righteous, and neither should

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

be treated as of itself the end to be aimed at.
Righteousness is the end. Righteousness when
triumphant brings peace; but peace may not
bring righteousness. Whether war is right or
wrong depends purely upon the purpose for
which, and the spirit in which, it is waged. Here
the analogy with what takes place in civil life
is perfect. The exertion of force or violence
by which one man masters another may be illus-
trated by the case of a black-hander who kidnaps
a child, knocking down the nurse or guardian;
and it may also be illustrated by the case of the
guardian who by violence withstands and thwarts
the black-hander in his efforts to kidnap the child,
or by the case of the policeman who by force ar-
rests the black-hander or white-slaver or who-
ever it is and takes his victim away from him.
There are, of course, persons who believe that
all force is immoral, that it is always immoral
to resist wrongdoing by force. I have never
taken much interest in the individuals who pro-
fess this kind of twisted morality; and I do not
know the extent to which they practically apply
it. But if they are right in their theory, then it
is wrong for a man to endeavor by force to
save his wife or sister or daughter from rape
or other abuse, or to save his children from ab-
duction and torture. It is a waste of time to
discuss with any man a position of such folly,

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WAR AND SOCIAL VALUES

wickedness, and poltroonery. But unless a man
is willing to take this position, he cannot hon-
estly condemn the use of force or violence in
war — for the policeman who risks and perhaps
loses or takes life in dealing with an anarchist
or white-slaver or black-hander or burglar or
highwayman must be justified or condemned on
precisely the same principles which require us
to differentiate among wars and to condemn un-
stintedly certain nations in certain wars and
equally without stint to praise other nations in
certain other wars.

If the man who objects to war also objects to
the use of force in civil life as above outlined,
his position is logical, although both absurd and
wicked. If the college presidents, politicians,
automobile manufacturers, and the like, who dur-
ing the past year or two have preached pacifism
in its most ignoble and degrading form are will-
ing to think out the subject and are both sincere
and fairly intelligent, they must necessarily con-
demn a police force or a posse comitatus just
as much as they condemn armies ; and they must
regard the activities of the sheriff and the con-
stable as being essentially militaristic and there-
fore to be abolished.

There are small communities with which I am
personally acquainted where the general prog-
ress has been such as really to permit of this

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

abolition of the policeman. In these communi-
ties— and I have in mind specifically one in New
England and one in the Province of Quebec —
the constable and sheriff have no duties what-
ever to perform, so far as crimes or deeds of
violence are concerned. The "social values" in
these communities are not in any way affected by
either the international militarism of the soldier
or by the civil militarism of the policeman, and
on the whole good results; although I regret to
say that in each of the two communities I have
in mind there have been some social develop-
ments that were not pleasant.

We ought all of us to endeavor to shape our
action with a view to extending so far as pos-
sible the area in which such conditions can be
made to obtain. But at present the area cannot,
as a matter of plain fact, be extended to most
populous communities, or even to ordinary scan-
tily peopled communities; and to make believe
that it can be thus extended is a proof, not of
goodness of heart, but of softness of head.

As a matter of practical common sense it is
not worth while spending much time at this mo-
ment in discussing whether we ought to take
steps to abolish the police force in New York,
Chicago, San Francisco, or Montreal, because
no police force is needed in a certain Vermont
town or a certain Quebec village. Such a dis-

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WAR AND SOCIAL VALUES

cussion would not help us in the least toward an
appreciation and development of the "social
values" of any one of the big cities in question.
Exactly the same principle, only a fortiori, ap-
plies as regards war. On the whole, there is a
much greater equality of intellectual and moral
status among the individuals in a great civilized
community than there is between the various na-
tions and peoples of the earth. The task of get-
ting all the policemen, all the college professors,
all the business men and mechanics, and also all
the professional crooks, in New York to abandon
the reign of force and to live together in har-
mony without any police force would be undoubt-
edly very much easier than to secure a similar
working agreement among the various peoples of
Europe, America, Asia, and Africa. One of the
commonest failings of mankind is to try to make
amends for failure to perform the duty at hand
by grandiloquent talk about something that is
afar off. Most of our worthy pacifist friends
adopt in this matter the attitude Mrs. Jellyby took
towards foreign missions when compared with
her own domestic and neighborhood duties. In-
stead of meeting together and passing resolutions
to affect the whole world, let them deal with
the much easier task of regulating their own lo-
calities. When we have discovered a method
by which right living may be spread so univer-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

sally in Chicago and New York that the two
cities can with safety abolish their police forces,
then, and not till then, it will be worth while to
talk about "the abolition of war." Until that
time the discussion will not possess even academic
value.

The really essential things for men to remem-
ber, therefore, in connection with war are, first,
that neither war nor peace is immoral in itself,
and, secondly, that in order to preserve the "so-
cial values" which were enumerated in the quo-
tation with which I began this chapter it is ab-
solutely essential to prevent the dominance in
our country of the one form of militarism which
is surely and completely fatal — that is, the mili-
tary dominion of an alien enemy.

It is utterly impossible to appreciate social
values at all or to discriminate between what is
socially good and socially bad unless we appre-
ciate the utterly different social values of dif-
ferent wars. The Greeks who triumphed at
Marathon and Salamis did a work without which
the world would have been deprived of the so-
cial value of Plato and Aristotle, of Aeschylus,
Herodotus, and Thucydides. The civilization of
Europe, America, and Australia exists to-day at
all only because of the victories of civilized man
over the enemies of civilization, because of vic-
tories stretching through the centuries from the

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WAR AND SOCIAL VALUES

days of Miltiades and Themistocles to those of
Charles Martel in the eighth century and those
of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century.
During the thousand years that included the ca-
reers of the Prankish soldier and the Polish king,
the Christians of Asia and Africa proved un-
able to wage successful war with the Moslem
conquerors; and in consequence Christianity
practically vanished from the two continents ; and
to-day nobody can find in them any "social val-
ues" whatever, in the sense in which we use the
words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan in-
fluence and the decaying native Christian
churches are concerned. There are such "social
values" to-day in Europe, America, and Austra-
lia only because during those thousand years the
Christians of Europe possessed the warlike
power to do what the Christians of Asia and
Africa had failed to do — that is, to beat back
the Moslem invader. It is of course worth while
for sociologists to discuss the effect of this Eu-
ropean militarism on "social values," but only if
they first clearly realize and formulate the fact
that if the European militarism had not been
able to defend itself against and to overcome
the militarism of Asia and Africa, there would
have been no "social values" of any kind in our
world to-day, and no sociologists to discuss them.
The Sociological Society meets at Washing-

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

ton this year only because the man after whom
the city was named was willing to go to war. If
he and his associates had not gone to war, there
would have been no possibility of discussing "so-
cial values" in the United States, for the excel-
lent reason that there would have been no United
States. If Lincoln had not been willing to go
to war, to appeal to the sword, to introduce mili-
tarism on a tremendous scale throughout the
United States, the sociologists who listened to
this chapter, when it was read to them, if they
existed at all, would not be considering the "so-
cial values" enumerated above, but the "social
values" of slavery and of such governmental and
industrial problems as can now be studied in
the Central American republics.

It is a curious fact that during the thirty years
prior to the Civil War the men who in the North-
ern and especially the Northeastern States grad-
ually grew to take most interest in the anti-slav-
ery agitation were almost equally interested in
anti-militaristic and peace movements. Even a
casual glance at the poems of Longfellow and
Whittier will show this. They were strong
against slavery and they were strong against
war. They did not take the trouble to think
out the truth, which was that in actual fact slav-
ery could be abolished only by war; and when
the time came they had to choose between, on

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the one hand, the "social values" of freedom and
of union and, on the other hand, the "social
value" of peace, for peace proved incompatible
with freedom and union. Being men fit to live
in a free country, they of course chose freedom
and union rather than peace. I say men; of
course I mean women also. I am speaking of
Julia Ward Howe and Harriet Beecher Stowe
just exactly as I am speaking of Longfellow and
Lowell and Whittier.

Now, during the thirty years preceding the
Civil War these men and women often debated
and occasionally in verse or prose wrote about
the effect of war on what we now call "social
values." I think that academically they were a
unit in saying that this effect was bad ; but when
the real crisis came, when they were faced by
the actual event, they realized that this academic
discussion as to the effect of war on "social
values" was of no consequence whatever. They
did not want war. Nobody wants war who has
any sense. But when they moved out of a world
of dreams into a world of realities they realized
that now, as always in the past has been the
case, and as undoubtedly will be the case for a
long time in the future, war may be the only
alternative to losing, not merely certain "social
values," but the national life which means the
sum of all "social values." They realized that

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

as the world is now it is a wicked thing to use
might against right, and an unspeakably silly,
and therefore in the long run also a wicked
thing, to chatter about right without preparing
to put might back of right. They abhorred a
wanton or an unjust war and condemned those
responsible for it as they ought always to be
condemned ; and, on the other hand, they realized
that righteous war for a lofty ideal may and
often does offer the only path by which it is
possible to move upward and onward. There are
unquestionably real national dangers connected
even with a successful war for righteousness;
but equally without question there are real na-
tional dangers connected even with times of
righteous peace. There are dangers attendant
on every course, dangers to be fought against
in every kind of life, whether of an individual
or of a nation. But it is not merely danger, it
is death, the death of the soul even more than
the death of the body, which surely awaits the
nation that does not both cultivate the lofty
morality which will forbid it to do wrong to
others, and at the same time spiritually, intel-
lectually, and physically prepare itself, by the
development of the stern and high qualities of
the soul and the will no less than in things ma-
terial, to defend by its own strength its own
existence; and, as I at least hope some time will

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WAR AND SOCIAL VALUES

be the case, also to fit itself to defend other na-
tions that are weak and wronged, when in help-
less misery they are ground beneath the feet of
the successful militarism which serves evil. At
present, in this world, and for the immediate fu-
ture, it is certain that the only way successfully
to oppose the might which is the servant of
wrong is by means of the might which is the
servant of right.

Nothing is gained by debate on non-debatable
subjects. No intelligent man desires war. But
neither can any intelligent man who is willing
to think fail to realize that we live in a great
and free country only because our forefathers
were willing to wage war rather than accept the
peace that spells destruction. No nation can per-
manently retain any "social values" worth hav-
ing unless it 'develops the warlike strength neces-
sary for its own defence.

CHAPTER III

THERE IS A SWORD FOR DEFENCE THERE
MUST BE A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

THE professional pacifists who have so ac-
tively worked for the dishonor of the
American name and the detriment of the Ameri-
can nation (and who incidentally have shown
themselves the basest allies and tools of triumph-
ant wrong) would do well to bear in view the
elementary fact that the only possible way by
which to enable us to live at peace with other
nations is to develop our strength in order that
we may defend our own rights. Above all, let
them realize that a democracy more than any
other human government needs preparation in
advance if peace is to be safeguarded against
war. So far as self-defence is concerned, uni-
versal military training and, in the event of need,
universal military service, represent the highest
expression of the democratic ideal in govern-
ment.

Jefferson had been an apostle of peace who
had declared "that peace was his passion," and
his refusal to lead the nation in preparedness

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

bore bitter fruit in the war of 1812. But at
least he learned aright the lesson that was
taught. In 1813 he wrote to Monroe:

"We must train and classify the whole of our
male citizens and make military instruction a
regular part of collegiate education. We can
never be safe till this is done."

And in 1814 he went still further:

"I think the truth must now be obvious that-
we cannot be defended but by making every citi-
zen a soldier, and that in doing this all must be
marshaled, classed by their ages, and every serv-
ice ascribed to its competent class."

President Monroe in his message to Congress
of December 3rd, 1822, just ninety-three years
ago, used expressions which without changing
a word can be applied to the far more urgent
needs of to-day. He said:

"The history of the late wars in Europe fur-
nishes a complete demonstration that no sys-
tem of conduct however correct in principle, can
protect neutral powers from injury from any
party; that a defenceless position and distin-
guished love of peace are the surest invitations
to war, and that there is no way to avoid it
other than by being always prepared and willing
for just cause to meet it. If there be a people
on earth whose more especial duty it is to be at
all times prepared to defend the rights with

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

which they are blessed, and to surpass all others
in sustaining the necessary burthens, and in sub-
mitting to sacrifices to make such preparations,
it is undoubtedly the people of these states."

The question of more real consequence to this
nation than any other at this moment is the ques-
tion of preparedness. The first step must be
preparedness against war. Of course there can
be no efficient military preparedness against war
without preparedness for social and industrial
efficiency in peace. Germany, which is the great
model for all other nations in matters of effi-
ciency, has shown this, and if this democracy
is to endure, it must emulate German efficiency
— adding thereto the spirit of democratic jus-
tice and of international fair play. Moreover,
and finally, there can be no preparedness in
things material, whether of peace or war, with-
out also preparedness in things mental and spirit-
ual. There must be preparedness of the soul
and the mind in order to make full preparedness
of the body, although it is no' less true that the
mere fact of preparing the body also prepares
the soul and the mind. There is the constant
action and reaction of one kind of preparation
upon another in nations as in individuals.

But there are certain elementary facts to be
grasped by this people before we can have any
policy at all. The first fact is a thorough un-

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

derstanding of that hoary falsehood which de-
clares that it takes two to make a quarrel. It
did not take two nations to make the quarrel
that resulted in Germany trampling Belgium into
the mire. It is no more true that it takes two
to make a quarrel in international matters than
it is to make the same assertion about a high-
wayman who holds up a passer-by or a black-
hander who kidnaps a child. The people who
do not make quarrels, who are not offensive, who
give no cause for anger, are those who ordinarily
furnish the victims of highwaymen, black-hand-
ers and white-slavers. Criminals always attack
the helpless if possible. In exactly similar fash-
ion aggressive and militarist nations attack weak
nations where it is possible. Weakness always
invites attack. Preparedness usually, but not
always, averts it.

The next fact to remember is that it is of no
use talking about reform and social justice and
equality of industrial opportunity inside of a na-
tion, unless that nation can protect itself from
outside attack. It is not worth while bothering
about any social or industrial problem in the
United States unless the United States is willing
to train itself, to fit itself, so that it can be sure
that its own people will have the say-so in the set-
tlement of these problems, and not some nation
of alien invaders and oppressors. Thanks to

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the weakness we have shown for five years, and
to the fact that for a year and a half we have
shown the "neutrality" of the Levite who passed
by on the other side when he saw on the ground
the man who had been wounded by robbers near
Jericho (and at the least the Levite did not boast
of his "neutrality"), the United States has not
a friend in the world.

Again, the United States should make up its
mind just what its policy is to be. Foolish people
say that the Monroe Doctrine is outworn, with-
out taking the trouble to understand what the
Monroe Doctrine is. As a matter of fact, to
abandon the Monroe Doctrine would be to invite
overwhelming disaster. In its essence the Mon-
roe Doctrine amounts to saying that we shall not
permit the American lands around us to be made
footholds for foreign military powers who would
in all probability create out of them points of
armed aggression against us. We must there-
fore make up our mind that we will police and
defend the Panama Canal and its approaches,
preserve order and safeguard civilization in the
territories adjacent to the Caribbean Sea, and
see that none of these territories, great or small,
are seized by any military empire of the Old
World which can use them to our disadvantage.
A prime duty, of course, is to secure livable con-
ditions in Mexico. To permit such conditions as

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

have obtained in Mexico for the past five years
is to put a premium upon European interference;
for where we shirk our duty to ourselves, to
honest and law-abiding Mexicans, and to all Eu-
ropean foreigners within Mexico, we cannot ex-
pect permanently to escape the consequences.

The events of the past year have shown that
all talk of preventing aggression from unscrupu-
lous militaristic nations by arbitration treaties,
Hague Conventions, peace agreements and the
like at present represents nothing but empty
declamation. No person outside of an imbecile
asylum should be expected to take such talk seri-
ously at the present time. Leagues to Enforce
Peace and the like may come in the future; I
hope they ultimately will; but not until nations
like our own are not too proud to fight, and are
too proud not to live up to their agreements. It
is at best an evidence of silliness and at worst
an evidence of the meanest insincerity to treat
the formation of such leagues as possible until
as a nation we do two things.

In the first place, we must make ready our
own strength. In the next place, by our action
in actually living up to the obligations we as-
sumed in connection with the Hague Conven-
tions, we must make it evident that there would
be some reasonable hope of our living up to the
onerous obligations that would have to be un-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

dertaken by any nation entering into a League
to Enforce Peace. The Hague Conventions were
treaties entered into by us with, among other na-
tions, Belgium and Germany. Under our Con-
stitution such a treaty becomes part of "the Su-
preme Law of the Land," binding upon ourselves
and upon the other nations that make it. For
this reason we should never lightly enter into a
treaty, and should both observe it, and demand
its observance by others when made. The Hague
Conventions were part of the Supreme Law of
our Land, under the Constitution. Therefore
Germany violated the Supreme Law of our Land
when she brutally wronged Belgium ; and we per-
mitted it without a word of protest.

Nearly eighteen months have gone by since
with the outbreak of this war it became evident
to every man willing to face the facts, that mili-
tary and naval problems and international prob-
lems of every kind were infinitely more serious
than we had had reason to believe, that treaties
were absolutely worthless to protect any nation
unless backed by armed force, and that the need
of preparedness was infinitely more urgent than
any man in this country had up to that time
believed. The belief that public opinion or in-
ternational public opinion, unbacked by force,
had the slightest effect in restraining a powerful
military nation in any course of action it chose

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

to undertake was shown to be a pathetic fallacy.
But any man who still publicly adheres to and
defends that opinion at the present time is en-
gaged in propagating not a pathetic, but an ab-
solutely mischievous and unpatriotic fallacy. It
is the simple and literal truth that public opinion
during the last eighteen months has not had the
very smallest effect in mitigating any atrocities
or preventing any wrongdoing by aggressive mil-
itary powers, save to the exact degree that there
was behind the public opinion actual strength
which would be used if the provocation was suf-
ficiently great. Public opinion has been abso-
lutely useless as regards Belgium, as regards
Armenia, as regards Poland. No man can as-
sert the contrary with sincerity if he takes the
trouble to examine the facts.

For eighteen months, with this world-cyclone
before our eyes, we as a nation have sat supine
without preparing in any shape or way. It is
an actual fact that there has not been one soldier,
one rifle, one gun, one boat, added to the Ameri-
can Army or Navy so far, because of anything
that has occurred in this war, and not the slight-
est step has yet been taken looking toward the
necessary preparedness. Such national short-
sightedness, such national folly, is almost incon-
ceivable. We have had ample warning to or-
ganize a scheme of defence. We have absolutely

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

disregarded the warning, and the measures so
far officially advocated are at best measures of
half -preparedness, and as regards the large as-
pect of the question, are not even that.

We should consider our national military pol-
icy as a whole. We must prepare a well-thought-
out strategic scheme, planned from the stand-
point of our lasting national interests, and stead-
ily pursued by preparation and the study of ex-
perts, through a course of years. The navy is
our first line of defence, but it must be remem-
bered that it can be used wisely for defence only
as an offensive arm. Parrying is never success-
ful from the standpoint of defence. The attack
is the proper method of efficient defence. For
some years we have been using the Navy inter-
nationally as a bluff defensive force, or rather
asserting that it would be so used and could
be so used. Its real value is as an offensive force
in the interest of any war undertaken for our
own defence. Freedom of action by the fleet is
the secret of real naval power. This cannot be
attained until we have at our disposal an ef-
fective military establishment which would en-
able us when threatened to repel any force dis-
embarking on our coast. This is fundamental.
It is only by creating a sufficient army that we
can employ our fleet on its legitimate functions.
The schemes of the Navy must always be cor-

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

related with the plans of the Army, and both of
them with the plans of the State Department,
which should never under any circumstances un-
dertake any scheme of foreign policy without
considering what our military situation is and
may be made. For reasons I give elsewhere I
believe that we should base our military and
naval program upon the retention and defence
of Alaska, Hawaii, the Panama Canal and all
its approaches, including all the points of South
American soil north of the Equator, and of
course, including the defence of our own coasts
and the islands of the West Indies. To free the
Navy we need ample coast defences manned by
a hundred thousand men, and a mobile regular
army of one hundred and fifty thousand men.
The proposed Administration program is a
make-believe program. It is entirely inade-
quate to our needs. It is a proposal not to do
something effective immediately, but to do some-
thing entirely ineffective immediately, and to
trust that the lack will be made good in succeed-
ing years. Congress has never been willing to
carry out the plans advocated by the General
Board. Until 1911, however, the differences be-
tween what was needed and what was actually
appropriated for, although real, was not appal-
lingly great. At the very time, however, when
the extraordinary development of navies abroad

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

rendered it imperative that we should enlarge
our own program and treat it far more se-
riously than ever before, Congress stopped en-
tirely the proper upbuilding of the Navy. At
present what is needed is immediately to strain
every nerve of the government so that this year
we will begin work on half-a-dozen formidable
fighting battleships and formidable speedy armed
cruisers. Whether we begin them in public or
private yards is of no earthly consequence com-
pared with the vital importance of beginning on
these ships somewhere at once — not next sum-
mer, but within thirty or sixty days. Frederick
Palmer has recently shown that in the three
squadron actions of this war the beaten side has
behaved with the same skill and prowess shown
by the victors but has been beaten purely be-
cause of the superiority of its opponent in the
speed of the ships and in the range and power
of the guns. He has furthermore shown that in
these three squadron actions the defeated ships
were in each case superior to any of our cruisers
in speed and range and power of guns. In other
words, our cruisers would be helpless against
those of a first-rate power at the present time.
Our people need to remember that half-
preparation is no preparation at all. A great
many well-meaning people are of the same mind
as a philanthropist who wrote me the other day

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

to the effect that he believed in some prepared-
ness, but not much. This is like building a bridge
half way across a stream, but not all the way. I
regret to state that this seems to be the attitude
which our Government now takes as a substitute
for its attitude of a year ago, when its view was
that preparedness was "hysterical," immoral and
unnecessary. The only proper attitude is that
there shall be no preparedness at all that is not
necessary, but that in so far as there is need
for preparedness the need shall be fully met.
Years ago I served as a deputy sheriff in the cat-
tle country. Of course I prepared in advance for
my job. I carried what was then the best type
of revolver, a .45 self-cocker. I was instructed
never to use it unless it was absolutely necessary
to do so, and I obeyed the instructions. But if
in the interest of "peace" it had been proposed
to arm me only with a .22 revolver, I would
promptly have resigned my job.

There are two immediately vital needs to be
met:

i. That our navy shall at the earliest possible
moment be made the second in the world in point
of size and efficiency. We do not need to make
it the first, because Great Britain is not a mili-
tary power, and our relations with Canada are
on a basis of such permanent friendliness that
hostile relations need not be considered. But

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the British Empire would, quite properly, be
"neutral" if we were engaged in war with some
great European or Asiatic power.

2. That our regular army shall be increased
to at least a quarter of a million men, with an
ample reserve of men who could be at once put
in the ranks in the event of a sudden attack
upon us; and provision made for many times
the present number of officers; and in admin-
istration, provision made for a combination of
entire efficiency with rigid economy that will be-
gin with the abandonment of the many useless
army posts and navy yards.

Neither of these needs is in any way met by
the Administration's proposals. I am sincerely
glad that the Administration has now reversed
the attitude taken in the President's message
to Congress of December, 1914, in which he ad-
vocated keeping this nation unprepared and help-
less to defend its honor and vital interest
against foreign foes. But I no less sincerely re-
gret that the Administration has not thought out
the situation and is not prepared to present a
real and substantial plan for defence instead of a
shadow program. During the last three years
our navy has fallen off appallingly in relative po-
sition among the nations. The Administration
now proposes a plan, to be followed mainly by the
next Administration, which, if hereafter lived

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

up to, would nominally replace the navy where it
formerly was in ten years' time and really not
until twenty years have passed — a plan which in
reality, therefore, is merely an adroit method of
avoiding substantial action in the present. This
will not do. There should be no policy of adroit
delay and make-believe action. Our government
should make provision this year which will insure
the regaining of our naval place at the earliest
possible moment. The work should begin on a
large scale at once. This is of the first impor-
tance.

But it is also vital to bring the army abreast of
national needs. The proposed plan to create a
rival national guard of half -trained or quarter-
trained volunteers — for that is what the absurdly
named "continental army" would amount to — if
tried will prove very expensive, very detrimental
to the existing national guard, and entirely use-
less from the standpoint of meeting the real needs
of the country. It is thoroughly undemocratic,
for it appeals to the "patriotism" of the employer
to let his employees be trained to do his fighting !
It would put a business premium on the unpatri-
otic employer who would not permit his men to
take part in it. It would be much wiser to spend
the money in increasing the size and efficiency
of the national guard, and establishing national
control over it — although this also would be a

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mere half-measure, in no way going to the root
of things. The Administration has declined to
ask for the adoption of any of the military sys-
tems which have been so strikingly successful in
Switzerland, Australia, Argentina, not to speak
of Germany. Instead they, congenially, ask for
the system which England fatuously tried, and
which in the crisis proved worthless. Their pro-
posed "continental army" has nothing in common
with Washington's continental army, which was
an army of regulars, whose efficiency was con-
ditioned by service year in and year out in win-
ter and summer. It is nothing but the English
"territorial" army, reliance upon which by Eng-
land was one of the main factors in securing that
unpreparedness for war for which England is
now paying so heavy a penalty — for the splendid
courage and self-sacrifice of the English who are
now fighting so gallantly can not wholly undo
the effects of the failure adequately to prepare in
advance. The best men among the Territorials
keenly realized the truth of the position taken by
that high-minded old hero, Lord Roberts, and in
1913 memorialized the English government in fa-
vor of a system of universal military service as
the only adequate method to secure effective
home defence. But the political leaders of Eng-
land insisted upon blindly following the easy path
to disaster, the path down which, in imitation

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

of these blind leaders, our own American politi-
cians now contentedly amble.

The proposed increase in the size of the regu-
lar army as outlined by the Administration is
utterly inadequate to serve any real purpose. It
is one of those half-measures which are of serv-
ice, if at all, only from the political standpoint.
Either we need to prepare or we do not. If we
do, then we should prepare adequately. I should
not regard as wise a proposal for doing away
with the New York Fire Department — the wis-
dom of such a proposal being about on a par with
the wisdom of the attitude of Messrs. Bryan,
Ford, Jordan, and the rest of the professional
pacifists, as regards what they are pleased to
call "militarism." Yet it would not be mate-
rially less wise than a proposal to compromise,
by, on the one hand, having fire engines,
but, on the other hand, not fitting them to throw
a stream of water higher than the second story.
The military plans of the Administration are on
a level with plans for the New York Fire Depart-
ment which should provide only for second-story
hose; they go on the theory that it is desirable
to try to put out a fire a little, but not too much.
Now, it is always wise either to let a fire alone or
to deal with it. thoroughly.

The unwisdom of being content with a sham
in this case is shown by the opposition of the pro-

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

fessional pacifists and peace-at-any-price leaders
even to the shkdow-plan of the Administration.
They have been busily engaged in opposing it on
the ground that it is "rushing into militarism,"
and that a standing army is an "instrument for
aggression." Of course in reality the trouble
with the Administration's plan is that the stand-
ing army it would provide would not even be an
instrument for defence. As for "rushing into
militarism," we are not even trickling in that di-
rection. The proposal advocated by the real be-
lievers in national defence (as distinguished
from those who support the Administration's
plan) is to make the regular army, relatively to
the United States, as large as the New York po-
lice force is relatively to the city of New York;
for a quarter of a million men bears to the nation
just about the proportion that the present police
force does to New York City. Surely even hys-
teria cannot see "militarism" and "aggression"
in such a proposal.

A few of the professional pacifists now support
the Government's plan for a half preparation, for
pretending to meet needs without meeting them.
But the extreme pacifists can always be trusted to
insist on the nadir of folly. They do not wish
to see this nation even pretend to act with self-
respect. It is natural that they should wage a
sham battle with a sham, for all their utterances

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

are those of men who dwell in a world of windy
make-believe. Their argument is that we should
have no preparedness whatever, that we should
not prepare for defence, nor bear arms, nor be
able to use force, and that this nation must "in-
fluence others by example rather than by exciting
fear," and must secure its safety "not by carry-
ing arms, but by an upright, honorable course."
Of course such a position can be honestly held
by a man of intelligence only if he also demands
the abolition of the police force throughout the
United States and announces that he will not re-
sent the action of an offender who slaps the face
of his wife or outrages his daughter. However,
to argue with these gentlemen is to waste time,
for there can be no greater waste of time than
to debate about non-debatable things.

It seems literally incredible that any human be-
ing can take the position now taken by the pro-
fessional pacifists, with the fates of Belgium and
China before their eyes at this very moment.
China has sought to influence others "by exam-
ple" instead of by "exciting fear," and half her
territory is in the possession of aliens. Belgium
thought to secure her safety "by an upright hon-
orable course" instead of by "carrying arms,"
and in consequence she has been trampled into
dust. Probably there is not in all Belgium a man,
a woman, or a child over six years old, who would

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consider the arguments of these pacifists against
preparedness as other than peculiarly heartless
jests. In China, however, among elderly man-
darins of unusually conservative type, it is pos-
sible that they would be taken seriously.

I very earnestly hope that the ordinary citi-
zens of this country, since their official leaders
refuse to lead them, will themselves wake to
their own needs and lead the should-be leaders.
Let us at once take action to make us the second
naval power in the world. Let us take the action
this year, not the year after next. Do it now.
The navy is our first line of defence. It is from
the national standpoint literally criminal to neg-
lect it.

As regards the army, first and foremost let us
know the advice of the experts. Then provide
a regular army of a quarter of a million men.
Relatively to the nation this army would be no
larger than the New York police force is rela-
tively to the city of New York. On paper our
present strength is 100,000, and we have in the
United States a mobile army of only 30,000 men.
We need 10,000 more men adequately to man our
coast defences at home, and 5,000 additional ade-
quately to man those abroad. We need 20,000
additional men to provide an adequate mobile
army for meeting a raid on our overseas pos-
sessions. At home we should have a mobile army

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

of 150,000 men, in order to guarantee us against
having New York or San Francisco at once
seized by any big military nation which went to
war with us. A quarter of a million in the regu-
lar army is the minimum that will insure the na-
tion's safety from sudden attack.

In addition we must provide backing for this
regular army. Provide a real reserve of enlisted
men. Provide as many officers, active and re-
serve taken together, as will enable us to officer
a million and a half of men in the event of war.
Meanwhile do everything possible for the na-
tional guard, providing the necessary Federal
control to make it really efficient ; and provide for
many training camps like that at Plattsburg.
Drop the undemocratic continental volunteer
army which discriminates between employer and
employed, which would help the unpatriotic em-
ployer who refused to 'do as his patriotic rival
was glad to do, and which would result merely
in the establishment of an inefficient rival to the
national guard. Provide an adequate reserve of
war material — this is of prime importance.

We should at once begin governmental encour-
agement and control of our munition plants. To
make war on them is to make war on the United
States; and those doing so should be treated ac-
cordingly and all who encourage them should be
treated accordingly. The existing plants should

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be encouraged in every legitimate way, and provi-
sion made to encourage their continuance after
the war. But it is most unfortunate that they are
situated so near the seacoast. The establishment
of munition plants further inland should be pro-
vided for, without delay. Pittsburg is as far east
as any plant should by rights be placed. This
whole matter of providing and regulating the
output of munitions is one in which Germany
should especially stand as our model. Let us
study carefully what she has done, and then de-
velop and adapt to our own needs the schemes
which she has found successful, supplementing
them with whatever additional measures our own
experience may indicate as advisable. There
should be a great plant in the southern iron fields
— the iron fields whose development was rendered
possible by the wise action of the United States
Government in permitting the United States Steel
Corporation to secure the Tennessee Coal and
Iron Company, action which has since been
passed on and approved by the Federal courts.

Steadily remember that ample material is use-
less unless we prepare in advance the highly
trained personnel to handle it. This applies all
the way through from battle cruisers and sub-
marines to coast guns and field artillery and aero-
planes. We need the best types of sea-going sub-
marines. We need an immense development of

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the Aviation Corps. I wonder how many of our
people understand that at this time the total
strength of the officers and men in the French
Aviation Corps surpasses in number the total
strength of the officers and enlisted men in the
United States Army? As regards the army —
strict economy should at once be introduced, and,
as a preliminary, all useless army posts should
be abandoned — just as economy in the navy
should imply the abandonment of useless navy
yards. A board of first-class army officers, and
another of first-class navy officers, should be
chosen and required to report, on purely military
grounds, which posts should be kept and which
abandoned; and their reports should be followed
implicitly. However, we ought to have training
posts for a mass of officers ready to lead our
citizen armies in time of need; and these army
posts and navy yards could be very advanta-
geously used for this purpose.

These are the needs that can be and ought to be
immediately met. But I believe with all my heart
that we must adopt a system of universal service
on the Swiss or Australian models, adapted of
course to our own needs. This is the method of
true democracy. In a free republic rights should
only be allowed as corollaries to duties. No man
has a right to vote who shirks his obligations to
the state whether in peace or war. The full citi-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

zen must do a citizen's full duty ; and he can only
do his full duty if he fits himself to fight for the
common good of all citizens in the hour of deadly
peril of the nation's life. Manhood suffrage
should mean manhood service in war just as
much as in peace. People speak in praise of vol-
unteers. I also praise the volunteer who volun-
teers to fight. But I do not praise the volunteer
who volunteers to have somebody else fight in
his place. Universal service is the only way by
which we can secure real democracy, real fair-
ness and justice. Every able-bodied youth in
the land should be proud to, and should be re-
quired to, prepare himself thoroughly to protect
the nation from armed aggression.

The question of expense is of wholly secondary
importance in a matter which may well be of
life or death significance to the nation. Five
years hence it may be altogether too late to spend
any money! We will do well at this time to
adopt, with a slight modification, the motto popu-
lar among our forefathers a century ago: Mil-
lions for defence but not a cent for either tribute
or aggression.

Fortunately we can, if we have sufficient good
sense and foresight, not only successfully safe-
guard ourselves against attack from without,
but can, and ought to, do it in such a manner as
immeasurably to increase our moral and material

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A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

efficiency in our everyday lives. Proper prepa-
ration for self-defence will be of immense inci-
dental help in solving our spiritual and indus-
trial problems.

In a country like ours a professional army will
always be costly, for as regards such an army
the Government has to go into the labor market
for its soldiers, and compete against industrial-
ism. Universal service, as an obligation on every
citizen, is the only way by which to secure an eco-
nomical and inexpensive army.

A democracy fit to be called such must do its
own fighting, and therefore must make ready in
advance. The poltroon and the professional
pacifist are out of place in a democracy. The
man fit for self-government must be fit to fight
for self-government. Universal service means
preparedness not for war but primarily against
war. Such essentially democratic preparedness
would render it less likely that war will come
and certain that if it does come we shall avoid
disgrace and disaster. Such preparedness would
mean much for the soul of this nation. The effi-
ciency of the average man in civil life would be
thereby greatly increased. He would be trained
to realize that he is a partner in this giant de-
mocracy, and has duties to the other partners.
He would first learn how to obey and then how
to command. He would acquire habits of order,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

of cleanliness, of self-control, of self-restraint, of
respect for himself and for others. The whole
system would be planned with especial regard to
the conditions and needs of the farmer and the,
workingman. The average citizen would become
more efficient in his work and a better man in
his relations to his neighbors. We would se-
cure far greater social solidarity and mutual un-
derstanding and genuine efficiency among our
citizens in time of peace. In time of war we
would put back of the navy and of the regular
army the weight of the whole nation. With the
navy and the very small regular army asked for,
only a quarter of a million men, we would be
able to meet sudden emergencies ; and behind the
army and navy would stand a people so trained
and so fitted that if the demand was not merely
to meet a sudden emergency but a great and long-
continued strain, our citizens would be able to
furnish within a reasonably short time the num-
ber of men necessary to meet this strain.

Universal military service as here indicated
would be the best preliminary for fitting this na-
tion for the kind of efficient industrialism, and
efficiency of spiritual and moral patriotism from
the standpoint of the commonwealth as a whole,
which would make us able to parallel the extraor-
dinary German achievements without loss of our
own democratic spirit. It is our great duty to

IOO

A SWORD FOR DEFENCE

combine preparedness for peace, efficiency in se-
curing both industrial success and industrial jus-
tice, with preparedness against war. We need
not in servile fashion follow exactly the example
set abroad, but if we are wise we will profit by
what has been achieved, notably among great
industrial nations like Germany, in these matters.
Switzerland has shown that the most absolute
democracy, without one touch of militarism, can
develop high industrial efficiency in time of peace
and can adequately prepare against war while
at the same time securing a marked advance
among the citizens in their relations with one an-
other, as regards the qualities of mutual respect,
of order, of regard for the law and for the rights
of the weak. We are the largest republic of the
world. Let us be ashamed to fall behind France,
a great republic, and Switzerland, a small but
gallant republic, and Australia, the great democ-
racy of the South Seas, and Argentina and Chile
in our own hemisphere, in such matters as pa-
triotism, as national efficiency, as the subordina-
tion of the individual to the socialized welfare of
the people as a whole.

The Administration, at this most critical
period of our history, when our people so need
the light, has refused to let them have the light,
by forbidding the professional officers to discuss
the problems which they are especially fitted to

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

discuss. It is treachery to the republic for states-
men— and for professional officers — to propose
and to acquiesce in unsound half-measures which
necessitate large continuing expenditures, but
which do not provide for adequate national de-
fence.

I am told that "women oppose war," and there-
fore that, with illogical folly, they oppose pre-
paredness against war. I appeal, as a lover of
peace, in the name of my wife and myself — the
father and mother of sons who would have to
go to war, and of daughters who in war would
work and suffer as much as the sons — to every
good man and good woman in this country. We
dread war; but we follow Washington and Lin-
coln in dreading some things worse than war.
Therefore we desire to prepare against war. I
wish every man and woman in the land would
read a piece in the November Woman's Home
Companion which my wife recently showed me.
The writer does not give her name. She says
she is "a plain old woman of seventy-three" who
lives "in a little country town in Kansas." She
tells of her husband, John, a skilled mechanic,
who went to war in '61, who later grew blind
from injuries received in the war, and whose life
was a hard, hard struggle. She says that she
would like to see everything done to keep war
away from us; that therefore she would like to

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see "forts, submarines, a fine strong fleet, and
then every boy raised to be a soldier," to see
"every man in some farm, or factory, or business
in peace times," but trained so as to be always
ready to defend the nation if the call comes; and
she "would include the girls, too" — which is quite
right, for universal service does not mean that
every man must fight, but that every man or
woman must serve the country in the position in
which he or she can render best service. She
ends by saying: "I did raise my boy to be a sol-
dier. If a million other mothers, if every mother
in the country would do the same, we would be
safe forever."

Universal service would be in every way benefi-
cial to the state and would be quite as beneficial
from the standpoint of those who consider the in-
terest of the state in time of peace as from the
standpoint of those who are interested in the
welfare of the state in time of war. The nor-
mal tests of military efficiency are the very tests
which would test a man's efficiency for industry
and for the ordinary tasks of civil life. If a
large percentage of men are unfit for military
service it shows that they are also poorly fit for
industrial work. A high percentage of infant
mortality does not mean the weeding out of the
unfit ; it means the existence of conditions which
greatly impair the vitality of even those who

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

survive. Moreover, the moral effect is at least
as great as the physical.

The fundamental evil in this country is the
lack of sufficiently general appreciation of the
responsibility of citizenship. Unfair business
methods, the misused power of capital, the unjus-
tified activities of labor, pork-barrel legislation,
and graft among powerful politicians have all
been made possible by, and have been mani-
festations of, this fundamental evil. Nothing
would do more to remedy this evil than the kind
of training in citizenship, in patriotism and in
efficiency, which would come as the result of uni-
versal service on the Swiss or Australian models
or rather on a combination of the two adapted to
our needs. There should be military training,
as part of a high-school education which should
include all-round training for citizenship. This
training should begin in the schools in serious
fashion at about the age of 16. Then between
the ages of 18 and 21 there should be six months
actual and continuous service in the field with
the colors.

Such universal training would give our young
men the discipline, the sense of orderly liberty
and of loyalty to the interests of the whole peo-
ple which would tell in striking manner for na-
tional cohesion and efficiency. It would tend to
enable us in time of need to mobilize not only

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troops but workers and financial resources and
industry itself and to coordinate all the factors
in national life. There can be no such mobiliza-
tion and coordination until we appreciate the ne-
cessity and value of national organization; and
universal service would be a most powerful fac-
tor in bringing about such general appreciation.

As a result of it, every man, whether he car-
ried a rifle or labored on public works or man-
aged a business or worked on a railway, would
have a clearer conception of his obligations to the
State. It would moreover be a potent method of
Americanizing the immigrant. The events of
the last eighteen months have shown us the grav-
ity of the danger to American life of the exist-
ence of foreign communities within our borders,
where men are taught to preserve their former
national identity instead of entering unreservedly
into our own national life. The hyphenated
American of any type is a bad American and an
enemy to this country: The best possible anti-
scorbutic for this danger is universal service.

Such a service would be essentially democratic.
A man has no more right to escape military serv-
ice in time of need than he has to escape paying
his taxes. We do not beseech a man to "volun-
teer" to pay his taxes, or scream that it would
be "an infringement of his liberty" and "con-
trary to our traditions" to make him pay them.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

We simply notify him how much he is to pay,
and when, and where. We ought to deal just
as summarily with him as regards the even more
important matter of personal service to the com-
monwealth in time of war. He is not fit to live
in the state unless when the state's life is at stake
he is willing and able to serve it in any way that
it can best use his abilities, and, as an incident,
to fight for it if the state believes it can best use
him in such fashion. Unless he takes this posi-
tion he is not fit to be a citizen and should be
deprived of the vote. Universal service is the
practical, democratic method of dealing with this
problem. Rich boy and poor boy would sleep
under the same dog tent and march shoulder to
shoulder in the hikes. Such service would have
an immense democratizing effect It would im-
prove the health of the community, physically
and morally. It would increase our national
power of discipline and self-control. It would
produce a national state of mind which would
enable us all more clearly to realize the necessity
of social legislation in dealing with industrial
conditions of every kind, from unemployment
among men and the labor of women and chil-
dren to the encouragement of business activities.
What I thus -advocate is nothing new. I am
merely applying to present day conditions the
advice given by President George Washington

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when he submitted a plan for universal military
training in his special message to Congress of
January 2ist, 1790. This plan advocated mili-
tary training for all the young men of the coun-
try, stating that "every man of proper age and
ability of body is firmly bound by the social com-
pact to perform personally his proportion of
military duty for the defence of the state," and
that "all men of the legal military age should be
held responsible for different degrees of military
service," and that "the United States are to pro-
vide for arming, organizing and disciplining
these men." This is merely another name for
compulsory universal service, and the plan ac-
tually provided that no man of military age
should vote unless he possessed a certificate
showing that he had performed such service.
Washington did not regard professional pacifists
as entitled to the suffrage.

I advocate universal service because it would
be a potent means of securing a quickened so-
cial conscience ; because it would help us greatly
industrially ; and because it would put us where,
if necessary, we shall be able to defend ourselves
against aggression. This is part, and a vital
part, of the doctrine of the larger American-
ism. The prime work for this nation at this mo-
ment is to rebuild its own character. Let us find
our own souls ; let us frankly face the world situ-

107

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

ation to-day as it affects ourselves and as it af-
fects all other countries. We must have a defi-
nite home policy and we must have a definite for-
eign policy. Let us, when we enter into treaties,
speak the truth, be wary of making promises, and
honorable in fulfilling them. Let us clearsight-
edly and after mature deliberation adopt a defi-
nite policy without and within our borders
and then prepare ourselves to carry it through.
Let us quit trying to fool ourselves by indulging
in cheap self-assertion or even cheaper sentimen-
tality. We must have a period of self -searching.
We must endeavor to recover our lost self-re-
spect. Let us show in practical fashion that we
fear God and therefore deal justly with all men ;
and let us also show that we can take our own
part; for if we cannot take our own part we
may be absolutely certain that no one else will
try to take it for us. A policy of unprepared-
ness and of tame submission to insult and ag-
gression invites the kind of repeated insolence by
foreign nations which in the end will drive our
people into war. I advocate preparedness, and
action (not merely words) on behalf of our hon-
or and interest, because such preparedness and
the readiness for such action are the surest guar-
antees of self-respecting peace.

The larger Americanism demands that we in-
sist that every immigrant who comes here shall

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become an American citizen and nothing else;
if he shows that he still remains at heart more
loyal to another land, let him be promptly re-
turned to that land; and if, on the other hand,
he shows that he is in good faith and whole-
heartedly an American, let him be treated as on
a full equality with the native born. This means
that foreign born and native born alike should
be trained to absolute loyalty to the flag, and
trained so as to be able effectively to defend the
flag. The larger Americanism demands that we
refuse to be sundered from one another along
lines of class or creed or section or national ori-
gin; that we judge each American on his mer-
its as a man; that we work for the well-being
of our bodily selves, but also for the well-being
of our spiritual selves; that we consider safety,
but that we put honor and duty ahead of safety.
Only thus shall we stand erect before the world,
high of heart, the masters of our own souls, fit
to be the fathers of a face of freemen who shall
make and shall keep this land all that it seemed
to the prophetic vision of the mighty men who
founded it and the mighty men who saved it.

109

CHAPTER IV

AMERICA FIRST — A PHRASE OR A FACT?

THE present Administration, with its invet-
erate fondness for Ephraim's diet, and its
conviction that phrase-making is an efficient sub-
stitute for action, has plumed itself on the sen-
tence, "America First." In practice it has acted
on the theory of "America Last," both at home
and abroad, both in Mexico and on the high seas.
One of the first and most elementary duties of
any nation worth calling either civilized or self-
respecting is to protect its citizens from murder
and outrage. For five years in Mexico, and for
a year and a half on the high seas in connection
with the great European war, the United States
Government has signally and basely failed in the
performance of this duty. The number of cases
in which American men, women and children
have been murdered on the high seas, first by
German, and now by Austrian, submarines, and
the number of cases in which American men
have been murdered and American women raped
in Mexico and in which American soldiers of the

no

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

United States, wearing the United States uni-
form, have been killed or wounded, and civilians,
men, women and children, killed or wounded on
American territory by Mexican soldiers, taken
in the aggregate mount far up into the hundreds.
The murders of Americans that have taken place
within the last thirty days have been of peculiarly
cold-blooded character. They have represented
a contemptuous disbelief in President Wilson's
willingness to do anything except write notes.
The deaths of these men and women are prima-
rily due to President Wilson's policy of timidity
and weakness.

Not one effective step has been taken to put an
end to these atrocities. Moreover, for five years
the outrages on the persons and property of other
foreigners in Mexico have been numerous; and
innocent Mexicans have been butchered by scores
of thousands; and in many thousands of cases
Mexican girls and women have been submitted to
the last extremity of infamy and outrage by the
brutal bandits masquerading as military or civil
leaders of the Mexican people. Our government
has let these people procure ammunition with
which to murder our own soldiers and their own
peaceful citizens; and the President has actually
proclaimed that they ought not to be interfered
with in "spilling blood."

During the last year and a half unoffending,
in

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

peaceful and law-abiding neutral nations like Bel-
gium, unoffending, industrious and law-abiding
peoples like the Armenians, have been subjected
to wrongs far greater than any that have been
committed since the close of the Napoleonic
Wars; and many of them are such as recall the
days of the Thirty Years' War in Europe, and,
indeed, in the case of the Armenians, the wars of
Genghis Khan and Tamerlane in Asia. Yet this
government has not raised its hand to do any-
thing to help the people who were wronged or to
antagonize the oppressors.

It is not an accident, it betokens a certain se-
quence of cause and effect, that this course of
national infamy on our part began when the last
Administration surrendered to the peace-at-any-
price people, and started the negotiation of its
foolish and wicked all-inclusive arbitration
treaties. Individuals and nations who preach
the doctrine of milk and water invariably have in
them a softness of fiber which means that they
fear to antagonize those who preach and prac-
tise the doctrine of blood and iron. It is true of
our people, as once it was true of the fellow-
countrymen of Ruskin when he said : "We have
been passive where we should not have been pas*
sive, for fear. The principle of non-intervention,
as now practised among us, is as selfish and cruel
as the worst frenzy of conquest, and differs from

112

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

it only by being not only malignant, but das-
tardly."

Professional pacifists of the stamp of Messrs.
Bryan, Jordan and Ford, who in the name of
peace preach doctrines that would entail not
merely utter infamy but utter disaster to their
own country, never in practice venture to de-
nounce concrete wrong by dangerous wrongdo-
ers. Professional pacifists attack evil only when
it can be done with entire safety to themselves.
In the present great crisis, the professional paci-
fists have confined themselves to trying to pre-
vent the United States from protecting its honor
and interest and the lives of its citizens abroad;
and in their loud denunciations of war they have
been careful to use language which would apply
equally to terribly wronged peoples defending
all that was dear to them against cynical and
ruthless oppression, and to the men who were re-
sponsible for this cynical and ruthless oppres-
sion. They dare not speak for righteousness in
the concrete. They dare not speak against the
most infamous wrong in the concrete. They
work hand in glove with these exponents of hy-
phenated Americanism who are seeking to turn
this country into an ally and tool of alien mili-
tarism.

These professional pacifists, through President
Wilson, have forced this country into a path of

"3

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

shame and dishonor during the past eighteen
months. Thanks to President Wilson, the most
powerful of democratic nations has refused to
recognize the binding moral force of interna-
tional public law. Our country has shirked its
clear duty. One outspoken and straightforward
declaration by this government against the dread-
ful iniquities perpetrated in Belgium, Armenia
and Servia would have been worth to humanity
a thousand times as much as all that the profes-
sional pacifists have done in the past fifty years.
The effect of our inaction in Mexico has been
unspeakably dreadful. It has on the whole been
surpassed in dishonor by the action of our gov-
ernment in reference to the great European War
— remembering in both cases that supine inaction
may under many conditions prove the very worst
form of action. Fine phrases become sickening
when they represent nothing whatever but adroit-
ness in phrase-making, with no intention of put-
ting deeds behind the phrases. For three years
the United States Government has been engaged
in sending notes and diplomatic protests and in-
quiries and warnings and ultimatums and pen-
ultimatums to Germany, to Mexico, to Austria;
and not one of these notes really meant or
achieved anything. These notes of Mr. Wilson
resemble the "notes" of Mr. Micawber. The
Micawber notes and the Wilson notes were of dif-

114

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

ferent kinds. But in value they were plainly on a
par. The Micawber notes always went to protest ;
and Mr. Micawber always fondly believed that one
could be sufficiently met by issuing another. Mr.
Wilson has suffered from the same fond delusion.

During this period the Administration has
failed to protect its naturalized citizens in
their rights when they have behaved them-
selves; and yet when they have not behaved
themselves has failed to insist on their perform-
ing their duties to the country to which they have
sworn allegiance. It has permitted the represen-
tatives of the German and Austrian peoples and
the German-Americans and Austro-Americans
whose allegiance is to Germany or Austria and
not to the United States to carry on within our
border a propaganda of which one of the results
has been the partial or entire destruction by fire
or dynamite of factory after factory. Summary
action of a drastic type would have put a stop to
this warfare waged against our people in time of
peace; but the Administration has not ventured
to act. There has been a great alien conspiracy
carried on against America on American soil,
and it has been encouraged by the Administra-
tion's passivity.

The Austrian Ambassador, Dr. Dumba, wrote
to the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs:
"We can disorganize and hold up, if not entirely

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

prevent, the manufacture of munitions in Beth-
lehem and the Middle West, which is of great
importance, and amply outweighs the expendi-
ture of money involved." Three months after
this was written, the threat was made good as
regards Bethlehem, and the Germania Herald in
Milwaukee expressed joy over the deed, saying
on November I2th : "We rejoice from the depths
of our heart over the destruction of these mur-
derous machines." Ten days later a so-called
"German-American" mass meeting took place in
Milwaukee, and the same paper next day re-
marked with exultation: "Germany last night
spoke to her children on a foreign shore loudly
and distinctly." So she did. The president of
the meeting said that their purpose was "to
spread German ideals" throughout the country
(we have seen above how they were spread, with
the bomb and the torch) and that he and his fel-
lows "considered the hyphen an honor." The
next speaker was quite as frank, saying: "We
are all German brothers together, no matter in
what country wre may live." The men who make
and applaud such utterances are the enemies of
this country. Their insolence is rendered pos-
sible because this Administration is too afraid of
the political consequences to dare to uphold the
honor of the American flag or protect the lives
of American citizens.

116

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

Before recurring to the dreadful dereliction
of duty to our own citizens I wish to speak an-
other word as to the failure on our part to per-
form our duty toward neutral nations. On Au-
gust 23rd, 1915, the New York World, recog-
nized by common consent as President Wilson's
special organ, published in detail certain secret
papers obtained from the German Embassy as
to the negotiations between the Embassy and
President Wilson and as to the steps taken by
the German representatives to engineer a pro-
German campaign in the United States. I would
not pay any heed to these statements if they had
been from an anti-Administration paper; but
they come, as I say, from the special organ of
the Administration. Among other things this
correspondence shows that an individual desig-
nated by the initials M. P., purporting to convey
a special message from the President to the
German Embassy, reported:

"i. The note to England will go in any event,
whether Germany answers satisfactorily or not
[the question of attacks by German submarines].

"2. Should it be possible to settle satisfactorily
the Lusitania case, the President will bind him-
self to carry the protest against England through
to the uttermost.

"3. The continuance of the difference with
Germany over the Lusitcmia case is 'embarrass-

117

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

ing' for the President in carrying out the protest
against England.

"4. The President intimated his willingness to
discuss the note to Germany [the note of July
2 ist which remains unanswered] with M. P.,
and eventually so to influence it that there will
be an agreement for its reception and also to be
ready to influence the press 'through a wink.'

"The President also openly declared that he
could hardly hope for a positive statement that
the submarine warfare would be discontinued."

Furthermore, the report was that the Presi-
dent, through M. P., "wishes to have the trend
of the German note before the note is officially
sent, and declares himself ready, before the an-
swer is drafted, to discuss it with M. P. so as to
secure an agreement for its reception."

Now, the action of the President since these
exposures were made shows that M. P. either
spoke by direction of the President or possessed
the gifts of mind-reading and prophecy; for the
agreement he purported to convey to the German
Ambassador from the President has since been
carried out to the letter. Germany has never
made any atonement for the Lusitania case, but
when England had destroyed its submarines
around the British Isles, and when Germany was
in consequence helpless to go on with this kind of
warfare, it then consented to abandon it, eight

ix8

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

months after the President had first warned
them on the subject — during which eight months
it had sunk ship after ship in defiance of the
President's warning, treating with the contempt-
uous indifference they deserved the successive
notes which the President continued sending as
substitutes for action. As soon as the President
had received this make-believe concession, he did
what M. P. had assured the German Ambassador
would be done. He sent a strong note to Eng-
land. This note was trumpeted as showing that
the President was taking the same action against
Germany as against England. The statement
was nonsense. Interference with commerce is
in no sense whatever comparable with the hein-
ousness of murder on the high seas. The contro-
versy with Great Britain was a controversy as to
commerce, as to property. The controversy with
Germany was a controversy of humanity con-
cerning the protection of innocent men, women
and children from murder on the ocean. Presi-
dent Wilson was making good the promise which
M. P. had alleged the President had forwarded
through him, and it was being done at the ex-
pense of humanity and at the expense of our rep-
utation for good faith and courage. All that
remains to be seen is whether Mr. Wilson will
now fulfill entirely the promise of M. P. to the
German Ambassador and carry out this policy

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against England, on which he has embarked, "to
the uttermost."

But this is not all. For a year and a quarter
the President had not only kept silent over the
hideous wrong inflicted on Belgium in and after
the violation of its neutrality by Germany, but
had publicly stated that as regards this violation
of neutrality, this conflict between right and
wrong, it was our duty to be "neutral not only in
word, but in thought." There was no question
as to what had been done. The Chancellor of
the German Empire on August 3rd, 1914, stated
that in invading Belgium, Germany had com-
mitted "a breach of international law" and had
declined "to respect the neutrality of Belgium,"
and that he admitted "the wrong which we are
now committing." Yet in spite of this declara-
tion, and of our inaction, the President, through
the Secretary of State, in his note to England
used the following expressions: "The task of
championing the integrity of neutral rights which
have received the sanction of the civilized world
against the lawless conduct of belligerents, the
United States unhesitatingly assumes and to the
accomplishment of that task it will devote its en-
ergies." It is literally astounding that any hu-
man being could have been guilty of the forget-
fulness or effrontery of such a statement. As
has been well said, it is odious hypocrisy to pose

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AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

as the champion of neutral rights when the al-
leged champion ignores homicide, but is fearless
about petty larceny. In his previous correspon-
dence with Germany, President Wilson had in-
formed Germany that if it acted as later it actual-
ly did act, he would hold it to "a strict accounta-
bility," and he showed by his subsequent conduct
that in his view these words meant precisely and
exactly nothing. By his previous conduct he has
shown that this new announcement about "un-
hesitatingly championing the integrity of neutral
rights" amounts to rnuch less than nothing.

A year and a half ago I pointed out that it was
the duty of the United States to "champion the in-
tegrity of the neutral rights" of Belgium (which
had received the sanction of the Hague Conven-
tions to which the United States was a signatory)
against the "lawless conduct" of belligerent Ger-
many. At that time the defenders of Mr. Wilson
denounced me on the ground that I "wished neu-
trality violated" and wished the United States to
ignore its own interests and meddle in something
which was, financially speaking, not its own af-
fair. Mr. Wilson himself publicly announced
that it was not our duty to champion these neu-
tral rights of Belgium against "the lawless con-
duct of belligerent" Germany, but that we should
be neutral, "not only in word, but in thought."
Yet now, a year later, Mr. Wilson repudiates his

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former position and himself expresses exactly my
thought and my demand in practically exactly
my language. Only — I meant what I said!
Whereas Mr. Wilson's acts have shown that he
did not mean what he said, so far as a nation of
which he was afraid was concerned. The dif-
ference is that having caused our nation to shirk
its duty to others, having caused it to shirk its
duty when its own citizens were murdered, so
long as the offender was a strong and ruthless
nation, one with a large voting strength of its
former citizens in this country, he now valiantly
asserts, against a nation whose representatives
have no voting strength in this country and
which he believes can with impunity be defied,
rights as regards cargoes of merchandise upon
which he did not dare to insist when the point at
issue was the slaughter of women and children ;
whereas I ask that we stand up for the wronged
and the weak against the strength of evil tri-
umphant, and that while we defend our property
rights, we even more strongly defend the lives of
our men and children, and the lives and honor of
our women.

As regards Belgium, Mr. Wilson has played
the part which 1900 years ago was played by the
Levite towards the wayfarer who fell among
thieves near Jericho. He now improves on the
conduct of the Levite; for he comes to an under-

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

standing with the plunderer of the wayfarer and
in his interest endeavors to browbeat the nations
which (however mixed their motives) did in ac-
tual fact endeavor to play the part of the Good
Samaritan towards unhappy Belgium.

Mr. Wilson, a year later, has finally adopted
my principle about preparedness, although he has
sought to apply it in a half-hearted and inefficient
manner; a year after I denounced peace-at-any-
price, he followed suit, quoting the verses of
Ezekiel which for months I had been quoting; a
year after I had attacked hyphenated American-
ism Mr. Wilson followed suit— at least before
the Colonial Dames ; and now he accepts my doc-
trine of America's duty to neutral nations, which
a year ago he stoutly opposed. But he applies it
only as regards American dollars, and only in
relation to nations who can be trusted not to be
rude. I believe it should be applied as regards
American dollars, but even more as regards
American lives, and that it should first and most
stoutly be asserted as regards the chief and most
formidable offender.

Come back to the case of the Lusitania!
When that ship was sunk scores of women and
children, including American women and chil-
dren, paid with their lives the penalty of a brutal
and murderous attack by a warship which was
acting in pursuance of the settled policy of the

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German Government. President Wilson sat su-
pine and complacent, making on the following
night his celebrated statement about a nation "be-
ing too proud to fight," a statement that under
the circumstances could only be taken as meaning
that the murder of American women and children
would be accepted by American men as justify-
ing nothing more than empty declamation.
These men, women and children of the Lusitania
were massacred because the German government
believed that the Wilson administration did not
intend to back up its words with deeds. The re-
sult showed that they were right in their belief.
Eight months have gone by since then. Ameri-
can ships were sunk and torpedoed before and
afterward; other American lives were lost; and
the President wrote other notes upon the subject ;
but he never pressed the Lusitania case; and the
only explanation must be found in his fear lest
the Germans might refuse to disavow their ac-
tion. Even the disavowal in the case of the
Arabic came only when the last possibility of
profit to Germany by killings that extended to
neutrals had vanished. President Wilson had
done nothing beyond uttering prettily phrased
platitudes about abstract morality without any
relation to action.

On July 2 ist last in a formal note he asked of
Germany a disavowal and promise of indemnity

124

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

for the Lusitania. This was the note which M.
P. purported to explain in the quotation above
given. If the explanation he gave to the German
Ambassador did not represent President Wil-
son's intentions, then there is absolutely no ex-
planation of the fact that for six months after
that note was sent there was no answer from
Germany and no second demand made for an an-
swer. The subject was renewed only when Ger-
many found that her submarine warfare had
failed, and that it was worth her while to pretend
to abandon it if thereby she could get the United
States to play her game against England, France
and Belgium. Germany believed, seemingly with
reason, that in return for a pretended concession
to President Wilson, the latter would play Ger-
many's game against England. And this move-
ment was only halted (whether temporarily or
not we can not now say) by the revelations in
January of the complicity of the German Em-
bassy in the plots against our munition plants.

Apparently President Wilson has believed that
the American people would permanently forget
their dead and would slur over the dishonor and
disgrace to the United States by that basest of
all the base pleas of cowardly souls, which finds
expression in the statement: "Oh, well, any-
how the President kept us out of war!" The
people who make this plea assert with qua-

125

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

vering voices that they "are behind the Presi-
dent." So they are; well behind him. The far-
ther away from the position of duty and honor
and hazard he has backed, the farther behind him
these gentry have stood — or run. "Stand by the
President" — yes, while the President is right ; and
stand against him when he is wrong. In '56 and
'60 the only way to stand by Lincoln was to stand
against Pierce and Buchanan — as Lincoln did.
If after the firing on Sumter, Lincoln had im-
mediately in a speech declared that the friends
of the Union might be "too proud to fight," and
had spent the next four months in exchanging
"firm" diplomatic notes with Jefferson Davis, he
would have received the enthusiastic support of
the ardent adherents of peace — and we would
now have had no country.

The German press, which is sometimes appal-
lingly frank, has with refreshing simplicity given
us the exact German view when, in commenting
on Mr. Wilson's note to England, the Koelnische
Volkszeitung recently remarked: "If America
had from the first energetically taken the posi-
tion against Great Britain now adopted, there
would have been no submarine war, no sinking
of the Lusitania or the Arabic."

Evidently this German paper is in cordial
agreement with M. P., and it will be impossible
to desire better proof of the deliberate purpose

126

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

with which the murderous assault on the Lusi-
tania was contrived, and of the German belief
that this murderous assault has achieved its pur-
pose in terrorizing President Wilson into his
present action about England, action which Dr.
Dernburg, speaking not only for Germany, but
for the hyphenated American voters of our own
country, eulogizes as showing that Mr. Wilson is
entitled to reward. So he is — except from Amer-
icans! But Dr. Delbrueck, also speaking for
Germany, warns Mr. Wilson that his note against
England must be followed byv action if he hopes
to retain German good will. The insolence with
which the German government browbeats the
timid folk at Washington is matched by the ex-
treme cynicism of its brutality. It coerces
wretched Belgians to make munitions with which
to kill their own countrymen and protests against
Americans making munitions to rescue Belgium
from the murderers. And there are Americans
so base as to advocate yielding to such threats
and protests; while Mr. Henry Ford takes some
of his fellow pacifists on a peace-junket to Eu-
rope, in the effort to bring about a peace more
degrading to humanity than the worst war — a
peace which would consecrate successful wrong,
and trample righteousness in the dust.

As the direct result of our failure to act in
the case of the Lusitania, came another hide-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

ous misdeed, the sinking of the Ancona. Over
two hundred persons, most of them women
and children, were murdered as a result of this
submarine attack on a helpless passenger ship.
Nine of those murdered were Americans. Of
course, it is a matter of absolutely no consequence
whether the deed was done by an Austrian or a
German submarine. Remember the Lusitania!
The deaths of these poor women and children on
the Ancona, and on the various other ships that
were sunk under similar circumstances, were due
to the cowardice of our action, of the action of
the American people through its Administra-
tion, in the case of the Lusitania. If our gov-
ernment had acted as it ought to have acted
— as all of us who believe in American
honor demanded that it should act, at the
time — there would be no Ancona case now,
no further murders of women and children on
the high seas. And yet the Administration sat
eagerly, nervously waiting for some pretext,
some trivial excuse which would enable it to avoid
action ; and it acted at all only when the Austrian
Government answered with such rude insolence
as to force some action ; and even then, the Presi-
dent did not dare act about the Lusitania case.
The Austrian vote in this country is small and
divided, and Austria cannot menace us in military
manner. Neither statement applies to Germany

128

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

and the professional German- Americans ; and ac-
cordingly President Wilson turns from the first
and most formidable offender, the offender of
whom he is afraid, and seeks to distract attention
by action against Austria, of whom he is much
less afraid. About the Lusitania the President
wrote note after note, each filled with lofty expres-
sions and each sterile in its utter futility, because
it did not mean action, and Germany knew it did
not mean action. Then came the Ancona as the
direct result of this policy of shuffling timidity
and delay, just as the Lusitania itself was the
direct result of the policy of "watchful waiting,"
that is, of shuffling timidity and delay, in Mex-
ico. And after the sinking of the Ancona came
the sinking of the Persia, and after the sinking
of the Persia the proofs of the activity of Ger-
many's official representative, Von Papen, in the
campaign of murder and arson against our mu-
nition factories. I blame the Administration, but
I blame even more the American people, who
stand supine and encourage their representatives
to permit unchecked the murder of women and
children and other non-combatants rather than
to take a policy which might, forsooth, jeopardize
the life of some strong fighting man.

The Administration has recently devised a
campaign button with a new campaign catch
phrase — "safety first." It certainly expresses

129

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART?

their attitude in putting honor and duty in the
second place, or, rather, in no place at all.
Safety first! This is the motto on which in a
shipwreck those men act who crowd into the life-
boats ahead of the women and children — although
they do not afterward devise a button to com-
memorate this feat. There could be no more
ignoble motto for a high-spirited and duty-lov-
ing nation. The countrymen of Washington and
Lincoln, of Jackson and Grant, of Lee and Farra-
gut, ought to hang their heads in shame at seeing
their representatives in Washington thinking not
about the slaughtered women and children, not
about the wrongs done to the helpless and the
dangers to our own people, but only about the
best way to escape from the situation without
being required to show either courage or patriot-
ism. It is an evil day for a people when it per-
mits its chosen representatives to practise the
gospel of cowardice and of utter and selfish
abandonment of duty. Let our countrymen re-
member that this policy of dishonor and discredit
does not even secure the safety which it seeks.
The policy of the Administration has not invited
respect. It has invited murder. It has not se-
cured peace — which, by the way, probably could
have been secured by a policy of self-respecting
strength and firmness. Peace is now in jeopardy,
because weakness and timidity invite the constant

130

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

repetition of actions which will in time goad any
nation into war.

Nor is this all. Germany and Austria have
not only been carrying on war against us on the
high seas. They have carried on war against us
here in our own land. They have, through their
representatives, encouraged strikes and outrages
in our factories. It has been published in the
press that in their consulates and in the foreign
papers controlled or influenced by these consul-
ates the Administration's ruling about "dual cit-
izenship" has been printed as a warning to im-
migrant workingmen that they were still citizens
of their old countries and had to obey the direc-
tions of their former governmental representa-
tives. Dr. Joseph Goricar, formerly Austro-
Hungarian consul at San Francisco, has resigned
because he declined to take part in the organized
movement to destroy munition plants in this
country. This movement is simply war ; a war of
assassination instead o-f open battle, but war
nevertheless ; and it is the direct result of the Ad-
ministration's supine position.

Surely one of our first needs is self-defence
against the conspirators of the torch and the
bomb. The men who are engaged in this work
are a great deal worse than ordinary alien ene-
mies. The newspapers that apologize for their
deeds or condone them should promptly be ex-

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

eluded from the mails. The men behind them,
the high governmental authorities of Germany
and Austria, are engaged in a much more vicious
warfare in this country than if they were actu-
ally resorting to open force of arms. But Presi-
dent Wilson has been seeking to placate, not only
these contemptuously hostile foreign nations, but
also the men nominally citizens of this country,
but really loyal to the foreign countries now hos-
tile to us. He has by his actions encouraged these
men to try to turn this country into a kind of
polyglot boarding-house where any set of alien
boarders may preach disloyalty and encourage
treason and murder with impunity.

It is sickening to have to recapitulate the
dreadful deeds that have been done during the
last year and a quarter, while the United States
sat tamely by. Miss Cavell was killed for deeds
such as were committed by literally thousands of
women, North and South, during the Civil War
in this country; and if either Abraham Lincoln
or Jefferson Davis had ever dreamed of putting
any of these women to death, a deafening roar
of execration would have gone up from the men
of both sides. But there was no hesitation in
killing Miss Cavell, and there was no disappro-
bation expressed by our Administration. Bel-
gium was blotted out from the list of nations by
an act which was a more flagrant instance of in-

132

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

ternational wickedness than anything that has
occurred since the close of the Napoleonic strug-
gles; but this Administration did not venture to
speak about it; and all the professional pacifists,
the men of the stamp of Messrs. Bryan, Jordan
and Ford, while with sobbing voices they called
for peace, peace, did not venture even to allude
to the outrage that had been perpetrated. Re-
member, there is not the slightest room for hon-
est question either as to the dreadful, the un-
speakably hideous, outrages committed on the
Belgians, or as to the fact that these outrages
were methodically committed by the express com-
mand of the German government, in order to ter-
rorize both the Belgians and among neutrals
those men who are as cold and timid and selfish
as our governmental leaders have shown
themselves to be. Let any man who doubts read
the statement of an American eye-witness of
these fearful atrocities, Mr. Arthur H. Gleason,
in the New York Tribune of Nov. 25, 1915. Ser-
bia is at this moment passing under the harrow
of torture and mortal anguish. Now, the Ar-
menians have been butchered under circum-
stances of murder and torture and rape that
would have appealed to an old-time Apache In-
dian. The Administration can do nothing even if
it wishes ; for its timid silence about Belgium, its
cringing fear of acting in the interests of our own

133

citizens when killed by Mexicans in Mexico or
by Germans and Austrians on the high seas,
would render any wordy protest on its part a
subject-matter for derision — and every one
knows that it would not venture beyond a wordy
protest.

But in the case of the Armenians some of the
professional pacifists and praisers of neutrality
have ventured to form committees and speak
about — not act about — the "Armenian atroci-
ties." These individuals did not venture to say
anything about the Belgian atrocities; but they
are willing to speak, although of course not to
act, on behalf of Armenia. The explanation is
simple. They were afraid of Germany; they
were afraid of the German vote. But there is no
Turkish vote, and they are not afraid of Turkey.

Under circumstances such as these it is the last
note of unpatriotic folly for the pacifists of this
country to chatter about peace, when they neither
venture to stand up for righteousness nor to fight
for real preparedness, so as to enable the United
States to insure justice for itself and to demand
justice for others. Mr. Taft accepts the presi-
dency of the "League to Enforce Peace," and
must of course know that unless the United States
had an army of two or three million men it could
do nothing at all toward "enforcing peace" in a
crisis like the present world war; and yet, ac-

134

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

cording to the press, he states that even a stand-
ing army of a couple of hundred thousand men
means "militarism" and "aggression" and is to
be opposed. This country will never be able to
find its own soul or to play a part of high no-
bility in the world until it realizes the full extent
of the damage done to it, materially and morally,
by the ignoble peace propaganda for which these
men and the others like them, whether capital-
ists, labor leaders, college professors, politicians
or publicists, are responsible.

The United States has not a friend in the
world. Its conduct, under the leadership of its
official representatives, for the last five years and,
above all, for the last three years, has deprived
it of the respect and has secured for it the con-
tempt of every one of the great civilized nations
of mankind. Peace treaties and windy Fourth-
of-July eloquence and the base materialism
which seeks profit as an incident to the abandon-
ment of duty will not help it now. For five years
our rulers at Washington have believed that all
this people cared for was easy money, absence
of risk and effort, and sounding platitudes which
were not reduced to action. We have so acted
as to convince other nations that in very truth we
are too proud to fight; and the man who is too
proud to fight is in practice always treated as just
proud enough to be kicked. We have held our

J35

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

peace when our women and children were slain.
We have turned away our eyes from the sight of
our brother's woe.

All of Mr. Henry Ford's companions, in the
peace propaganda, led by gentlemen of the Bryan
and Jordan type, could with profit study the
thoughts expressed by Mr. E. S. Martin when he
said:

"Nobody is much good who has not in him
some idea, some ideal, that he cares more for
than he does for life, even though it is life allevi-
ated by the Ford motor.

"You help to make life pleasant, but war,
Henry, helps to make it noble; and if it is not
noble it does not matter a damn, Henry, whether
it is pleasant or not. That is the old lesson of
Calvary repeated at Mons and Ypres and Liege
and Namur.

"Whether there are more people in the world
or less, whether they are fat or lean, whether
there are Fords or oxen, makes no vital differ-
ence ; but whether men shall be willing to die for
what they believe in makes all the difference be-
tween a pigsty and Paradise. Not by bread
alone, Henry, shall men live."

If the people have not vision, they shall surely
perish. No man has a right to live who has not
in his soul the power to die nobly for a great
cause. Let abhorrence be for those who wage

136

AMERICA FIRST— A PHRASE OR A FACT?

wanton or wicked wars, who with ruthless vio-
lence oppress the upright and the unoffending.
Pay all honor to the preachers of peace who put
righteousness above peace. But shame on the
creatures who would teach our people that it is
anything but base to be unready and unable to
defend right, even at need by the sternest of all
tests, the test of righteous war, war waged by a
high-couraged people with souls attuned to the
demands of a lofty ideal.

Have these professional pacifists lost every
quality of manhood? Are they ignorant of the1
very meaning of nobility of soul? Their words
are an affront to the memory of Washington,
their deeds a repudiation of the life-work of Lin-
coln. Are they steeped in such sordid material-
ism that they do not feel one thrill as they read
Edward Everett Male's "The Man Without a
Country"? It is strange indeed that even their
cold and timid hearts should be unstirred by
Lowell's homely lines:-

Better that all our ships an' all their crews
Should sink to rot in ocean's dreamless ooze,
Each torn flag wavin' challenge as it went,
An' each dumb gun a brave man's monu-
ment,

Than seek sech peace ez only cowards crave ;
Give me the peace of dead men or of brave.

'37

CHAPTER V

DURING the past year the activities of our
professional pacifists have been exercised
almost exclusively on behalf of hideous interna-
tional iniquity. They have struck hands with
those evil enemies of America, the hyphenated
Americans, and with the greediest representa-
tives of those Americans whose only god is
money. They have sought to make this country
take her stand against right that was downtrod-
den, and in favor of wrong that seemed likely to
be successful. Every man or woman who has
clamored for peace without daring to say that
peace would be a crime unless Belgium was re-
stored to her own people and the repetition of
such wrongdoing as that from which she has suf-
fered provided against, has served the Devil and
not the Lord. Every man or woman who in the
name of peace now advocates the refusal on the
part of the United States to furnish arms and
munitions of war to those nations who have had
the manliness to fight for the redressing of Bel-

138

HYPHENATED AMERICANISM

gium's wrongs, is serving the Devil and not the
Lord.

As for the hyphenated Americans, among the
very many lessons taught by the last year has
been the lesson that the effort to combine fealty
to the flag of an immigrant's natal land with
fealty to the flag of his adopted land, in practice
means not merely disregard of, but hostility to,
the flag of the United States. When two flags
are hoisted on the same pole, one is always
hoisted undermost. The hyphenated American
always hoists the American flag undermost. The
American citizen of German birth or descent who
is a good American and nothing but a good
American, and whose whole loyalty is undivid-
edly given to this country and its flag, stands on
an exact level with every other American, and is
entitled to precisely the same consideration and
treatment as if his ancestors had come over on
the Mayflower or had settled on the banks of the
James three centuries ago. I am partly of Ger-
man blood, and I am exactly as proud of this
blood as of the blood of other strains that flows
in my veins. But — I am an American, and noth-
ing else!

The German-Americans who call themselves
such and who have agitated as such during the
past year, have shown that they are not Ameri-
cans at all, but Germans in America. Their ac-

139

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

tion has been hostile to the honor and the interest
of this country. The man who sings "Deutsch-
land iiber Alles" means exactly what he sings.
He means that he puts Deutschland above the
American flag, above the honor of the United
States, and above the well-being of Americans as
a whole.

The Americans of German origin have been a
peculiarly valuable element in our population. I
believe that they are, in overwhelming propor-
tion, thoroughgoing Americans. As I have said,
I am partly of German blood. A large number
of my closest friends, a large number of the men
whom I most respect and honor in American
life, are Americans of German parentage or de-
scent or of German birth. One such American,
a descendant of one of Blucher's colonels, sat in
my Cabinet ; and he sat beside another American,
a descendant of one of Napoleon's brothers.
But each was an American and nothing else!
The scientific book of which I was proudest, I
wrote in partnership with a close friend, a natu-
ralist who was with me in Africa; he is of Ger-
man parentage ; but he is an American and noth-
ing else. The man who was closest to me politi-
cally during the ten years of my service as
Governor and President was of German parent-
age; but he was absolutely straight American.
Some of the best men in my regiment, including

140

HYPHENATED AMERICANISM

my orderly and one captain, were of German
birth or descent; but they were Americans, pure
and simple. Among the clergymen, philanthro-
pists, publicists, good citizens of all kinds, with
whom I work in heartiest sympathy, an unusually
large proportion are of German descent and
some of German birth. I get on with these men
and women exactly as well as I do with the men
and women of Colonial American descent. But
I get on with them because they are Americans
and nothing else.

I stand for the American citizen of German
birth or descent, precisely as I stand for any
other American. But I do not stand at all for
the German-American, or any other kind of
hyphenated American. When I was President I
was brought into close contact with many officers
of the army and navy. Col. George Washington
Goethals has done the best work done by any
American of recent years. He is of Dutch par-
entage. But he is no. more a Dutch-American
than I am. He is just plain American. Among
my military and naval aides were Lee, Grant,
Sheridan and Osterhaus, all descended from
generals who fought in the Union or Confed-
erate Armies. Two of them were of old Revo-
lutionary stock, Scotch or English. The grand-
father of the third was born in Ireland, and the
grandfather of the fourth in Germany. But they

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were all Americans and nothing else. General
Wood, of Revolutionary stock, started Cuba on
the road to self-government; General Barry, of
Irish parentage, commanded the army that res-
cued Cuba from revolution ; and one was exactly
as good an American as the other. Among the
admirals upon whom I leaned were Dewey,
Evans, Taylor, and Cameron Winslow, of Revo-
lutionary stock; and O'Neil and Schroeder, one
of Irish and the other of German descent; and
the last two were exactly as good Americans as
the other four. It would have been a crime as
well as a calamity to endeavor to divide all these
and all the other fine and gallant officers of our
army and navy on lines of birth or national
origin or creed. It is no less a crime and a
calamity to attempt to divide our citizens as a
whole along such lines.

There was never a better American than Jacob
Riis, who was born in Denmark and whom I
always thought about the best American I ever
knew. The Americans in whom I believe in-
clude Jews and Catholics and Protestants. They
include men of old native American descent and
other men of recent German, English, French,
Irish, Italian, Scandinavian, Magyar and Sla-
vonic descent ; but all are Americans entitled to be
treated as such, and claiming to be nothing else.
I as emphatically condemn opposition to a good

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HYPHENATED AMERICANISM

American who happens to be of German birth
or descent, because of that fact, as I condemn
action by such a man designed to serve not the
United States, but some foreign power. I speak
against the German-American who seeks to use
his American citizenship in the interest of a
foreign power and who thereby shows himself
an unworthy American. I should speak exactly
as quickly against the American of English or
French or Scandinavian or Irish descent who
was guilty of similar conduct. The following
letter which I recently wrote explains itself:

" I am very sorry but I cannot sign that

appeal. I do not approve of it. You are asking
Americans to proclaim themselves Anglo-Ameri-
cans, and to sympathize with England on the
ground that England is the mother-land, and in
order to make what you call 'hands across the
sea' a matter of living policy. I do not believe
that this is the right attitude for Americans to
take. England is not my mother-land any more
than Germany is my father-land. My mother-
land and father-land and my own land are all
three of them the United States. I am among
those Americans whose ancestors include men
and women from many different European coun-
tries. The proportion of Americans of this type
will steadily increase. I do not believe in hyphen-

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ated Americans. I do not believe in German-
Americans or Irish- Americans ; and I believe just
as little in English-Americans. I do not ap-
prove of American citizens of German descent
forming organizations to force the United States
into practical alliance with Germany because
their ancestors came from Germany. Just as lit-
tle do I believe in American citizens of English
descent forming leagues to force the United
States into an alliance with England because
their ancestors came from England. We Ameri-
cans are a separate people. We are separated
from, although akin to, many European peoples.
The old Revolutionary stock was predominantly
English, but by no means exclusively so; for
many of the descendants of the Revolutionary
New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians and Georgians
have, like myself, strains of Dutch, French,
Scotch, Irish, Welsh and German blood in their
veins. During the century and a quarter that
has elapsed since we became a nation, there has
been far more immigration from Germany and
Ireland and probably from Scandinavia than
there has been from England. We have a right
to ask all of these immigrants and the sons of
these immigrants that they become Americans
and nothing else; but we have no right to ask
that they become transplanted or second-rate
Englishmen. Most emphatically I myself am not.

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an Englishman-once-removed! I am straight
United States!

"In international matters we should treat each
nation on its conduct and without the slightest
reference to the fact that a larger or smaller
proportion of its blood flows in the veins of our
own citizens. I have publicly and emphatically
taken ground for Belgium and I wish that the
United States would take ground for Belgium,
because I hold that this is our duty, and that
Germany's conduct toward Belgium demands
that we antagonize her in this matter, and that
we emphatically and in practical shape try to see
that Belgium's wrongs are redressed. Because
of the British attitude toward Belgium I have
publicly and emphatically approved of her atti-
tude, that is of Great Britain's conduct in living
up to her obligations by defending Belgium, even
at the cost of war. But I am not doing this on
any ground that there is any 'hands across the
sea' alliance, explicit or implicit, with England.
I have never used in peace or in war any such
expression as 'hands across the sea,' and I em-
phatically disapprove of what it signifies save in
so far as it means cordial friendship between us
and every other nation that acts in accordance
with the standards that we deem just and right.
On this ground all Americans, no matter what
their race origins, ought to stand together. It is

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

not just that they should be asked to stand with
any foreign power on the ground of community
of origin between some of them and the citizens
of that foreign power. [Signed Theodore
Roosevelt.]"

We of America form a new nationality. We
are by blood, and we ought to be by feeling, akin
to but distinct from every nationality of Europe.
If our various constituent strains endeavor to
keep themselves separate from the rest of their
fellow-countrymen by the use of hyphens, they
are doing all in their power to prevent themselves
and ourselves from ever becoming a real nation-
ality at all.

An American who is loyal to this great Ameri-
can nation has two duties, and only two, in in-
ternational matters. In the first place, he is
bound to serve the honor and the interest of the
United States. In the second place, he is bound
to treat all other nations in accordance with their
conduct at any given time, and in accordance
with the ultimate needs of mankind at large; and
not in accordance with the interests of the Euro-
pean nation from which some or all of his an-
cestors have come. If he does not act along these
lines, he is derelict in his duty to his fellow-citi-
zens and he is guilty of betraying the interests
of his country.

As for the persons who base their actions upon
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greed in such a crisis as this, little needs to be
said. The beef baron or the representative of the
cotton interests who wishes to ignore the butch-
ery of our women and children, and the sinking
of our ships by German submarines, and to take
sides against the Allies so that he may make
money by the sale of cotton and beef, is faithless
to every consideration of honor and decency. It
is entirely fitting that the sheer materialist should
on such an issue stand shoulder to shoulder with
the professional pacifist, the peace-at-at-any-
price man, and with his sinister brother, the hy-
phenated American. These men by their actions
seek to condone the murder of American men,
women and children and the trampling of Bel-
gium into bloody mire. They are false to the
cause of humanity. They come perilously near
being treasonable to this country. It is hard to
decide which is the most abject quality ; the greed
of the mere materialists or the short-sighted cow-
ardice of the professional pacifists. As for the
hyphenated American, he endeavors to serve his
foreign Fatherland without exposing his own
wretched carcass to the danger which would
come to him if he served in the trenches beside
his fellow-countrymen who have stayed at home
— and who at least pretend to no divided allegi-
ance.

I am not willing to admit that this nation has

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

no duty to other nations. Yet the action of this
Government during the past year can only be de-
fended on the assumption that we have no such
duty to others.

Of course, it is a defensible, although not a
lofty, position to deny that there is such a duty.
But it is wholly indefensible to proclaim that there
is such a duty and then in practice to abandon it.
It is a base thing to propose to pass all-inclusive
arbitration treaties, and to pass the thirty-odd
all-inclusive commission peace treaties that ac-
tually have been passed during the last two years,
and yet not to dare to say one word when the
Hague Conventions which we have already
signed are violated by the strong at the expense
of the weak. I agree with the abstract theory
of the men responsible for all these various treat-
ies ; for this theory is to the effect that America
owes a duty to the world, to humanity at large.
I disagree with their practice, because I believe
that we should in fact perform this duty, instead
of merely talking about it in the abstract and
then shamefully abandoning it the moment it be-
comes concrete.

As a nation, during the past eighteen months
we have refused to prepare to defend our own
rights by our own strength. We have also re-
fused to say one word against international
wrongdoing of the most dreadful character. We

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HYPHENATED AMERICANISM

have refused to carry out the promises we made
in the Hague Conventions. We have been guilty
of all these mean sins of omission, we are official-
ly told, in the hope that the Administration may
secure the empty honor of being a go-between
when the belligerents decide to make peace. The
actions of the Administration have tended to
create such conditions that the "peace" shall be
in the interest of the wrongdoer, and at the ex-
pense of his helpless victim. It is not right that
this nation should be asked thus to shirk its duty
to itself and to others in order to secure such a
worthless function for any person whatsoever.
Our plain duty was to stand against wrong, to
help in stamping out the wrong, to help in pro-
tecting the innocent who had been wronged.
This duty we have ignobly shirked. Nor is there
any immediate probability that the empty honor
which the Administration seeks will be granted
to it. If it were, then doubtless there would be
shallow Americans who would trumpet the fact
as somehow creditable to America. But there is
not another nation by which the United States un-
der such conditions would be treated as having
played any part excepting that of a dupe ; or else
the part of a cold and selfish intriguer, willing to
sacrifice the welfare of humanity to the gratifica-
tion of personal vanity.

Let our people keep their eyes fixed on the case
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of Belgium. Belgium had faithfully observed
her international obligations. She had fulfilled
her duties in a spirit of loyal impartiality. She
had neglected no opportunity to maintain her
neutrality and to cause it to be respected by oth-
ers. The attack upon her independence by Ger-
many was a flagrant violation of the law of na-
tions and a crime against humanity. It has been
carried out with inhuman severity. There has
been no more abhorrent spectacle in history than
the revenge visited upon Belgium for her daunt-
less defence of national rights and international
obligations. In all the grim record of the last
year this is the overshadowing accomplishment
of evil. The American who defends the action
taken against Belgium, or who fails to condemn
it, is unworthy to live in a free country, or to as-
sociate with men of lofty soul and generous tem-
per. Deep though the hurts are which have been
inflicted upon civilization by the sacrifice of mil-
lions of lives among the bravest and best of the
men of Europe, yet deeper and more lasting is
the wound given by the blow struck at interna-
tional law and international righteousness in the
destruction of Belgium. This crime of Germany
was a crime against international good faith, a
crime against the soul of international law and
fair dealing. It is to this act of unforgivable
treachery that every succeeding infamy is to be

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traced; from terrorism and indiscriminate
slaughter on land to terrorism and indiscriminate
massacre of non-combatants at sea. And this
crime of Germany has been condoned by the
recreant silence of neutral nations, and above
all by the recreant silence of the United States
and its failure to live bravely up to its solemn
promises.

I am not speaking now of the hideous atroci-
ties committed in Belgium and Northern France,
as shown in such reports as that of the committee
of which Lord Bryce was Chairman. I am not
now speaking of the killing of non-combatants,
including scores of women and children, in Eng-
land and Italy, by air-craft and sea-craft. I deal
only with facts as to which there is no dispute.
In its broad outlines, what has occurred in the in-
vasion of Belgium is not susceptible of dispute.
The action being taken at this moment in Belgium
is spoken of as follows by the Norddeutsche All-
gemeine Zeitung in replying to German critics
who were actually asserting that Belgium was
being too mercifully treated. The German de-
fence of Germany's "merciful" action in Belgium
is as follows (condensed; the italics are my own) :

"The German government is acting in Bel-
gium with the object of preventing the safety and
health of our army from being imperiled by fam-
ine and disease behind it. For this reason the

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

German government has gladly consented to food
being supplied to the starving population by neu-
tral countries in order to insure that our own
troops shall not suffer privation. No more coal
will be allowed to be taken from Belgian mines
than will suffice for the bare needs of the shiver-
ing people and enable the industrious laboriously
to exist. It is the right of the conqueror and our
duty toward our own army to enable the con-
quered territory to produce the sums which with-
out prejudice to a later war indemnity are with-
drawn from the country in the shape of contri-
butions. We demand at present from Belgium a
payment of one hundred and twenty millions of
dollars to be made in instalments within one
year. This sum represents the limit of the pres-
ent capacity of the country, which has been
grievously affected by the war. The loss suffered
by Belgium thus far through actual destruction
is estimated at a value of more than a billion and
a quarter of dollars. To this figure we have to
add the contribution, and the whole amount must
be earned by Belgium."

And the ignoble pacifists of the United States
are at this moment agitating to prevent any ex-
port of arms and munitions to be used in redeem-
ing the country which is suffering such hideous
oppression! There was a period when Ameri-
cans were proud of standing for Kossuth and for

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HYPHENATED AMERICANISM

Garibaldi, when they subscribed for those who
had suffered from wrong in Ireland or Poland,
when they sympathized with patriots wrongfully
oppressed in any land. The Americans of a by-
gone generation who possessed such sympathies
should turn in their graves at the thought that
alleged believers in peace now advocate action in
the interest of these oppressors who have
trampled on the bodies and seared the souls of the
men, women and children of peaceful and unof-
fending Belgium.

If no duty had been expressly imposed upon
the United States in this matter, we ought never-
theless to have acted in accordance with the gen-
erous instincts of humanity. But as a matter of
fact such a duty was expressly imposed upon us
by the Hague Conventions. The Convention,
signed at The Hague October i8th, lo/)?,1 begins
by saying that "His Majesty the German Em-
peror, King of Prussia," and the other signatory

1 See pp. 133-140 of "The Hague Conventions and Decla-
rations" [1915], edited by James Brown Scott. Dr. Scott is
our foremost international lawyer. He is the head of the
division of International Law of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. He has practically proved that he
is a believer in the peace of righteousness; for he was an
enlisted man in the American army in the Spanish War, hav-
ing left his position as Dean of the Los Angeles Law School,
now the Law School of the University of Southern Cali-
fornia, in order to serve his country.

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powers, including France, Belgium, Russia and
the United States, have resolved to conclude a
Convention laying down clearly the rights and
duties of neutral powers in case of war on land.
Article I runs: "The territory of neutral pow-
ers is inviolable." Article 5 states that a neutral
power "must not allow belligerents to move
troops across its territory." Article 10 states
that "the fact of a neutral power resisting even
by force attempts to violate its neutrality cannot
be regarded as a hostile act." Article 7 states
that "a neutral power is not called upon to pre-
vent the export or transport on behalf of one or
other of the belligerents of arms, munitions of
war or in general of anything which could be of
use to an army or a fleet." This Convention
was ratified by Belgium on August 8th, 1910; by
France on October 7th, 1910; by Germany, the
United States and Russia on November 27th,
1909. It has been alleged by individuals anxious
to excuse us for failure to act in accordance with
our duty under this Convention that article 20
recites : "The provisions of the present Conven-
tion do not apply except between contracting
powers and then only if all the belligerents are
parties to the Convention." In the first place
this objection would be merely technical, even if
in some other area of the war a belligerent who
was not a party to the Convention was concerned;

HYPHENATED AMERICANISM

for of course the Convention must be construed
with common sense. But even if it is construed
in the most technical manner, it applies to the
action taken by Germany in Belgium. This ac-
tion was taken on August 3d and 4th, 1914.
Germany was then at war only with France and
Russia, both of which were signatories to this
convention. Belgium was a signatory. The
United States was a signatory. Germany was
not at war at that time with Servia or Monte-
negro or England; nor was Austria at war with
Belgium. When Germany violated the Hague
Convention to which we were one of the signa-
tory powers all of the belligerents in the case
were signers of the Hague Convention. The
case is technically no less than morally complete.
A treaty is a promise. The signing powers
make promises each to the others and each to each
of the others in such a case as this. Germany
had promised France, Belgium, the United States
and Russia that it would treat the territory of a
neutral power (in this case Belgium) as invio-
lable. Germany violated this promise. Belgium
had promised Germany, the United States,
France and Russia that it would not permit such
violation of its neutrality as Germany committed.
Belgium kept its promise. Germany had prom-
ised that if a neutral power (Belgium) resisted
by force such an attempt as it, Germany, made

155

to violate its neutrality, Germany would not re-
gard such an act as hostile. Germany broke this
promise. When Germany thus broke her prom-
ises, we broke our promise by failing at once to
call her to account. The treaty was a joint and
several guarantee, and it was the duty of every
signer to take action when it was violated ; above
all it was the duty of the most powerful neutral,
the United States.

Germany promised that she would not call
upon any neutral power to prevent the export or
transport of arms or munitions of war on behalf
of any belligerent. Germany broke this promise
when she made precisely such a demand upon us.
This was a flagrant act of bad faith on the part
of Germany. It is especially flagrant in view of
the fact, testified to me by one of the representa-
tives at the Hague Conferences, and well known
to all connected with the Hague Conferences,
that this article was insisted upon by Germany.
Mr. Charles Noble Gregory, the Chairman of the
Standing Committee on international law of the
American Bar Association, in a capital piece set-
ting forth the right of our citizens to sell muni-
tions of war to any belligerent power, mentions
the same fact. He states that one of our Hague
representatives told him that the chief interest of
the German delegates seemed to be in securing
this article, because the Krupp works at Essen

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were the chief purveyors of munitions of war to
foreign powers.

A representative of a great American arms
manufactory informed me recently that they had
been about to abandon their work prior to the
beginning of this war, because the Germans sys-
tematically endeavored to undersell them in
every country. It has been the settled policy of
Germany to drive all other countries out of the
business of manufacturing arms and supplies be-
cause, of course, if this were once substantially
accomplished, the rest of the world would be com-
pletely helpless before Germany; and Germany
has made it evident that she knows no such thing
as international morality and looks upon all other
nations, including the United States, merely as
possible prey. The Americans who are now
striving to prevent the sale of munitions of war
to the countries endeavoring to secure the re-
dress of Belgium's wrongs, that is, the Allied
Powers, are playing the game of a ruthlessly
militaristic and anti- American Germany against
their own country as well as against the interests
of humanity at large. They are profoundly un-
patriotic from the standpoint of the interests of
the United States. They are committing the
gravest possible offence against the cause of in-
ternational right and of the interest of humanity.

It was Germany which for decades supplied
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Turkey with the means of keeping the Christians
of her European and Asiatic provinces in a state
of dreadful subjection. It was Germany which
established the artillery in the Belgian forts —
and, as one of the men engaged in the work in-
formed a friend of mine, the German War Of-
fice was then furnished with blue-prints of what
had been done and of the neighboring geography,
so as to enable the German armies to take the
forts with the least possible delay and damage.
Essen has been the center of military supplies to
belligerents and has exported on an enormous
scale to belligerents in all the modern wars, mak-
ing vast profits from this traffic even in the late
Balkan wars. Germany has consistently fol-
lowed this course, even when one of the belliger-
ents alone had access to her markets and the
other, with which she was nominally in sympathy,
had no such access. This was shown in the Boer
War. Among the supplies furnished by Ger-
many to Great Britain for use against the Boers
were 108 fifteen pounder quick-firing guns and
54,000 rounds of ammunition for them; 65,000
hundredweight of swords, cutlasses, bayonets
and arms of other sorts; 8,000,000 rounds of
small-arms' ammunition and 1,000,500 of metal
cartridge cases other than small-arms' ammuni-
tion ; and some 27,000 hundredweight of cordite,
gunpowder, dynamite and the like. In short,

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Germany has thriven enormously on the sale of
arms to belligerents when she was a neutral ; she
insisted that such sale be sanctioned by the Hague
Conventions; she, so far as possible, desires to
prevent other nations from manufacturing arms;
and if she is successful in this effort she will have
taken another stride to world dominion. The
professional pacifists, hyphenated Americans,
and beef and cotton- Americans ; in short, all the
representatives of American mollycoddleism,
American greed, and downright treachery to
America, in seeking to prevent shipments of mu-
nitions to the Allies, are playing the game of a
brutal militarism against Belgium and against
their own country.

Of course, if sales of munitions are improper
in time of war, they are precisely as improper in
time of peace, for in time of peace they are made
only with a view to possible war. To prohibit
them is to put a premium upon aggressive nations
manufacturing their own ammunition, for it is
the non-aggressive nations that do not conduct
great manufactories for munitions of war. On
November 13, 1870, Goldwin Smith, who was in
ardent sympathy with the Germans in their con-
test with France of that year, wrote to his friend,
Max Miiller, upholding the propriety of the ac-
tion of the United States in selling munitions of
war to France, the right to do which had been in-

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sisted upon by President Grant. He stated that
the Americans were acting in accordance with
the right view of international law in refusing
to prohibit such sales of arms. His letter runs in
part: "If this were done, a great disadvantage
would be given against the interests of civiliza-
tion to the Powers which during peace employed
their revenues in arming themselves for war in-
stead of endowing professors. A moral and civ-
ilized people which had been benefiting humanity
would be assailed by some French Empire which
had been collecting chassepots, and when it wants
to provide itself with the means of defence inter-
national law would shut up the gunshops."

In our existing treaties with Germany the
right to such shipment of arms is explicitly af-
firmed, as it has also been in the Hague Conven-
tion from which I have above quoted. The
American government has always maintained the
right of its citizens to ship arms to belligerents.
President Washington, through his Secretary of
State, Thomas Jefferson, and his Secretary of the
Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, took this posi-
tion when France protested against the sale of
arms to England in 1793, the answer being that
"the exporting from the United States of war-
like instruments and military stores is not to be
interfered with." President Lincoln, through
his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, took

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this view in 1862, when Mexico complained of
the export of military supplies from the United
States for the benefit of the French. President
Lincoln and Secretary Seward sympathized with
Mexico but explicitly informed Mexico that
Mexico could not "prescribe to us what merchan-
dise we shall not sell to French subjects because
it may be employed in military operations against
Mexico." President Grant and Secretaries of
State Henry Clay, Bayard, Elaine, Olney and
John Hay are among the high officials who have
publicly taken the same position.

At this time to alter such a rule during the
pendency of a state of war to the benefit of one
of the warlike powers would be to place the
United States on the side of that power — of the
wrongdoing power — and to make it in effect it-
self a belligerent. The position was correctly
stated on January 25, 1915, by President Wilson
through Secretary of State Bryan in a published
letter which recites that "the duty of a neutral
to restrict trade in munitions of war has never
been imposed by international law or by munici-
pal statute. It has never been the policy of this
government to prevent the shipment of arms or
ammunition into belligerent territory;" and in
response to the German protest it was stated that
our right to export munitions of war to belliger-
ents was settled and assured and it was declared

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that our government holds "that any change in
its own laws of neutrality during the progress of
a war which would affect unequally the relations
of the United States with the nations at war
would be an unjustifiable departure from the
principles of strict neutrality by which it has
sought to direct its actions."

A great expert on international law has said
"that a system under which a peaceful commer-
cial state may not, when attacked, use her cash
and her credits in international markets to equip
herself for defence is intolerable and in every
way pernicious. Rules which interfere with such
a right would tend to give the victory in war to
the belligerent best prepared at the outset and
therefore to make it necessary for peaceful na-
tions to be in a constant state of over-prepared-
ness." Under the German proposal a well be-
haved state which was not armed to the teeth
could not, if wantonly attacked, be allowed to
equip herself for defence. The American pro-
fessional pacifists, in accepting the German po-
sition in this matter, are, as usual, playing into
the hands of the Powers that believe in unprin-
cipled aggression. The United States, if sud-
denly assailed by some great military power,
would suffer incalculably from the application of
the doctrine thus advanced by our silly profes-
sional pacifists.

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The warlike and aggressive nation chooses the
moment of attack and is fully equipped in ad-
vance. If the nation assailed cannot replenish
her supplies from outside, she must always main-
tain them in time of peace at the highest point or
else expose herself to ruin. The professional
pacifists, the cotton-Americans, the beef barons
and the German- Americans — in other words, the
hyphenated Americans, the greedy materialists
and all the mollycoddles of both sexes — advocate
the prohibition of the shipment of munitions to
the Allies who are engaged in fighting Belgium's
battles. They thereby take a stand which, not
merely in the concrete case of the moment but in
all future cases, would immensely benefit power-
ful and aggressive nations which cynically disre-
gard the rules of international morality at the
expense of the peaceful and industrial nations
which have no thought of aggression and which
act toward their neighbors with honorable
good faith.

From the standpoint of international law, as
I have shown above, we have the absolute right
to make such shipments. Washington and Lin-
coln, in fact all our Presidents and secretaries
have peremptorily refused to allow this right to
be questioned. The right has been insisted upon
by Germany in her own interest, more strongly
than by any other nation, up to the beginning of

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the present war. It has been exercised by Ger-
many herself on a larger scale than by any other
nation up to the time that she herself went to war.
From the standpoint of morality the justifica-
tion is even more clear. Selling arms to a bel-
ligerent may be morally either very right or very
wrong. This depends absolutely upon the jus-
tice of the cause in which the arms are to be used.
This is as true in international as in private
matters. It is moral and commendable to sell
arms to a policeman in order that he may put
down black-handers, white-slavers, burglars,
highwaymen and other criminals who commit
acts of violence. It is immoral to sell arms to
those who are committing or intend to commit
such acts of violence. In the same way it is thor-
oughly immoral in any way to help Germany win
a triumph which would result in making the sub-
jugation of Belgium perpetual. It is highly
moral, it is from every standpoint commendable,
to sell arms which shall be used in endeavoring
to secure the freedom of Belgium and to create
a condition of things which will make it impos-
sible that such a crime against humanity as its
subjugation by Germany shall ever be repeated,
whether by Germany or by any other power.

164

CHAPTER VI

PEACE INSURANCE BY PREPAREDNESS AGAINST

WAR

IN the 33d chapter of the great prophet Eze-
kiel, the first six verses run as follows:

1. Again the word of the Lord came unto me,
saying :

2. Son of man, speak to the children of thy
people and say unto them, When I bring the
sword upon a land, if the people of the land take
a man of their coasts and set him for the watch-
man;

3. If when he seeth the sword come upon the
land, he blow the trumpet and warn the people;

4. Then whosoever heareth the sound of the
trumpet and taketh not warning, if the sword
come and take him away, his blood shall be upon
his own head;

5. He heard the sound of the trumpet and
took not warning, his blood shall be upon him.
But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.

6. But if the watchman see the sword come
and blow not the trumpet and the people be not
warned ; if the sword come and take any person

165

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

from among them, he is taken away in his ini-
quity; but his blood will I require at the watch-
man's hand.

I very heartily commend these verses to the
prayerful consideration of all those in high po-
litical office, whether Presidents, Secretaries of
State, or leaders of the Senate and the House at
Washington; and to all male and female college
presidents, clergymen, editors and publicists of
pacifist tendency ; and above all to the sometimes-
well-meaning souls who have fallen victims to
the habit of prolonged and excessive indulgence
in attending universal peace meetings and giving,
and listening to, lectures on immediate universal
peace and disarmament.

Five years have gone by since Mexico, which
had made no preparedness whatever against for-
eign war, was thrown into a violent civil war, at-
tended with circumstances which made it our
duty to take action, a duty which during the five
years we, in our turn, have sedulously avoided
fulfilling in efficient fashion. Eighteen months
have passed since the great world war that cen-
ters in Europe burst out with, as its first result,
the hideous destruction of the Belgian people — a
destruction primarily due to the fact that Bel-
gium had not prepared against war as Switzer-
land had prepared. The United States, in con-
nection with The Hague treaties, had undertaken

166

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

certain obligations to Belgium and to both neu-
tral and belligerent powers. With criminal ti-
midity we have failed to fulfill these obligations.
We have also failed to stand up for the rights
of our own people in any efficient fashion, even
when our men, women and children were mur-
dered on the high seas. We have earned, and
have richly deserved, the contemptuous dislike
of all the nations of mankind by the course we
have followed for a year as regards the great
world war, and for five years as regards Mex-
ico. Worst of all, we have utterly failed, even
with the lesson of the last year writ in blood and
fire before our eyes, to take steps to protect our-
selves from such horrors.

It is we ourselves, it is the American people,
who are responsible for the public sentiment
which permits unworthy action on the part of
our governmental representatives. The peace
propaganda of the past ten years in this country
has steadily grown more noisy. It received an
enormous impetus when five years ago, by the
negotiation of peace-at-any-price or all-inclusive
arbitration treaties, and in the last year by the
ratification of the thirty odd peace-at-any-price
arbitration-commission treaties, it was made
part of our national governmental policy. It is
the literal truth to say that this peace-at-any-
price propaganda has probably, on the whole,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

worked more mischief to the United States than
all the crookedness in business and politics com-
bined during the same period. It has repre-
sented more positive deterioration in the Ameri-
can character. Millions of plain Americans,
who do not have the opportunity to know the
facts or to think them out for themselves, have
been misled in this matter. They are not to
blame; but the leaders and organizers of that
movement, its upholders and apologists on the
stump and in the pulpit and in the press, are very
greatly to blame. Really good and highminded
clergymen, capable of foresight and brave enough
to risk being misrepresented, have stood stead-
fastly against the odious creed which puts peace
ahead of righteousness. But every cheap man
in the pulpit, like every cheap demagogue on the
stump, has joined in the "peace-at-any-price" cry.
Some of the men and women who uphold the
cause of the professional pacifists are actuated
by good motives. The same statement can be
made of some of the Tories in the Revolution-
ary War, of some of the Copperheads in the Civil
War. But the fact remains in this case, as in
the case of the Copperheads and the Tories, that
the sum of the activities of the men and women
thus engaged was purely mischievous and rep-
resented evil to America and evil to the cause of
international justice and right. Wilkes Booth

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

was an honest man; when he assassinated Lin-
coln he was doubtless sincere in the belief that
he was doing right; and great courage was
needed to perform the evil feat. Yet surely
Wilkes Booth did a worse deed than the most cor-
rupt politician or businessman of his time. In
exactly the same way the man who preaches
peace at any price, non-resistance to all wrong,
disarmament and the submission of everything
to arbitration, no matter how sincere and honest
he may be, is rendering a worse service to his
fellow-countrymen than any exponent of crooked
business or crooked politics.

The deification of peace without regard to
whether it is either wise or righteous does not
represent virtue. It represents a peculiarly base
and ignoble form of evil. For this reason it is
a positive detriment to international morality for
any man to take part in any of these universal
peace-at-any-price or all-inclusive arbitration
movements. Nor is this all. A movement right
in itself may be all wrong if made at the wrong
time. Even the proposal for a world peace of
righteousness, based on force being put back of
righteousness, is inopportune at this time.

There are far more pressing and immediate
duties. First and foremost, the United States
must seriously prepare itself against war, and
show itself able to maintain its rights and make

169

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

its weight felt in the world. Next, it must aban-
don both the policy of poltroonery — the policy
we have practised as regards the Lusitania and
Mexico — and the policy of recklessly making
promises which neither can nor ought to be kept
— the policy we practiced in the proposed all-
inclusive arbitration treaties five years ago, and,
above all, in the unspeakably silly and wicked
thirty all-inclusive arbitration-commission trea-
ties actually negotiated under the present Ad-
ministration. Our people should note well the
fact that these treaties were in principle
promptly repudiated by the very President who
had negotiated them as soon as Mr. Bryan asked
that the principle be concretely applied in the case
of the Lusitanics.

When we are prepared to make our words
good and have shown that we make no promises
which we are not both ready and willing to back
up by our deeds, then, and not until then, we
shall be able with dignity and effect to move
for the establishment of a world agreement to
secure the peace of justice. Such agreement
must explicitly state that certain national rights
are never to be arbitrated because the nations
are to be protected in their exercise; that other
matters shall be arbitrated; and that the power
of all the nations shall be used to prevent wrong
being done by one nation at the expense of an-

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

other. To put peace above righteousness is
wicked. To chatter about it, without making
ready to put strength behind it, is silly.

But all this is for the fufure, and it is beating
the air to talk about it at present. "Ephraim
feedeth on wind" — and wind is not a substantial
diet. A nation which is "too proud to fight" is a
nation which is sure to be kicked; for every
fighting man or nation knows that that particu-
lar kind of "pride" is merely another name for
abject cowardice. A nation helplessly unable to
assert its own rights; a nation which for five
years has refused to do its duty in Mexico and
yet is unwilling to see other nations do their
duty there ; a nation which without the utterance
of one word of protest has seen The Hague Con-
ventions which it signed torn to pieces and
thrown to the winds ; a nation which has not ven-
tured beyond empty words when its ships were
sunk and its citizens, men, women and children,
slain on the high seas, is in no position to help
the cause of either peace or justice, and would
excite merely derision if it proposed at this mo-
ment the creation of a "World League for
Peace."

The six great powers of Europe have sent
their best and their bravest by the million to die
for the right as God gave them to see the right.
All their finest young men are at the front.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Some of them are fighting for good, some for
evil; but all are fighting for what they think to
be good, and all are showing splendid and heroic
qualities. We excite only derision when under
these circumstances we permit foolish people,
men and women, in the name of America to prat-
tle in meaningless words about the kind of peace
that brave men and high-minded women will al-
ways scorn. The all-insistent duty of the mo-
ment for America is two- fold. First, we must
prepare ourselves against disaster by facing the
fact that we are nearly impotent in military mat-
ters, and by remedying this impotence. Second,
we must seriously and in good faith, and once for
all, abandon the wicked and foolish habit of treat-
ing words as all-sufficient by themselves, and as
wholly irrelevant to deeds; and as an incident
thereto we must from now on .refuse to make
treaties which cannot be, and which will not be,
lived up to in time of strain.

As regards the last matter, promise and per-
formance, we Americans must rid ourselves of
the habit of salving our vanity, when down at
bottom we know we are not behaving well, by
using fine words to excuse ourselves from effort
which ought to be made, and to justify ourselves
in avoiding risk which ought to be accepted.

There are persons who are against prepared-
ness for war and who believe in the avoidance of

17*

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

national duty, who nevertheless are honest in
their belief and who may not be cowardly or
weak, but only foolish and misguided ; and there
are hundreds of thousands of good and reason-
ably brave men and women who simply have not
thought of the matter at all and who are mis-
guided by their leaders. But of most of these
leaders it is not possible to take so charitable a
view. The fundamental characteristic of the
peace-at-any-price men is sheer, downright phys-
ical or moral timidity. Very many of the leaders
among the men who protest against preparedness
and who are hostile to manly action on our part —
hostile to the insistence in good faith upon the ob-
servance of The Hague Conventions and upon re-
spect for the lives and property of our citizens in
Mexico and on the high seas — are easily cowed
by any exhibition of ruthless and brutal force,
and never venture to condemn wrongdoers who
make themselves feared. This fact might just
as well be faced. To it is due the further fact
that the professional pacifist usually turns up as
the ally of the most cynical type of international
wrong-doer.

This has been made evident by the attitude of
the great bulk of the men and women who have
shrieked loudest for peace during the last eight-
een months. It has been made evident by the men
who have joined in the Peace Conferences, Peace

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Dinners and Peace Voyages during that time,
and by the women of the same type who on this
side of the water, or after traveling to the other
side of the water, have advocated a peace with-
out honor or justice. These men and women
have demanded peace in terms that would not
merely disregard righteousness, but that would
crown unrighteousness with success. They have
not ventured to make one protest against any
concrete act of wrongdoing; they have not ven-
tured to raise their voices in denunciation of the
iniquity wrought by Germany against Belgium,
the most wanton, the most hideous wrong, and
the wrong on the largest scale, that had been per-
petrated for over a century. Some of the women
in question were abroad, actively engaged in ex-
citing contempt and derision for themselves and
their country by crying for peace without justice
and without redress of wrongs, at the very time
that the Lusitania was sunk.

American women and children were at the time
being slain on the high seas ; Belgian women and
children, French women and children, in Belgium
and Northern France, were at the same time suf-
fering the last extremities of infamy and out-
rage ; English women and children, in unfortified
towns, were being killed by the bombs of German
war vessels and aircraft ; and our own women in
Mexico had been subjected to nameless infamies.

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

But these amiable peace prattlers had not one
word of effective sympathy for any of the wo-
men and children who had suffered these dreadful
fates. All they did was to utter silly platitudes,
which were of comfort to the wrongdoers, and
which, in so far as they had any effect, con-
founded right and wrong and put a premium
upon wrongdoing by making it evident that, if
successful, it would escape condemnation; be-
cause the condemnation was so uttered as, if any-
thing, to bear more heavily on those who resisted
wrong than upon those who inflicted wrong.
There is no meaner moral attitude than that of
a timid and selfish neutrality between right and
wrong.

Such action does not represent righteousness.
At best it represents folly. Often it represents
cowardice. Always it represents unrighteous-
ness. Not the smallest particle of good has come
from the peace propaganda of the last ten years
as carried on in America. Literally, this agita-
tion of the professional pacifists during these ten
years has not represented the smallest advance
toward securing the peace of righteousness. It
has, on the other hand, represented a very con-
siderable and real deterioration in the American
character. I do not think it is a permanent' de-
terioration. I think that we shall recover and
become heartily ashamed of our lapse from vi-

'75

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

rile manliness. But there has been a distinct
degeneracy in the moral fiber of our people owing
to this peace propaganda, a distinct increase in
moral flabbiness, a distinct increase in hysteria
and sentimental untruth fulness.

Not once in a thousand times is it possible to
achieve anything worth achieving except by la-
bor, by effort, by serious purpose and by the
willingness to run risk. The persons who seek
to persuade our people that by doing nothing, by
passing resolutions that cost nothing, and by
writing eloquent messages and articles that mean
nothing, and by complacently applauding elocu-
tion that means less than nothing, some service is
thereby rendered to humanity, are not only ren-
dering no such service, but are weakening the
spring of national character. This applies to the
publicists and politicians who write messages and
articles and make speeches of this kind; it applies
to the newspaper editors and magazine writers
who applaud such utterances; and most of all it
applies to those of our people who insist upon the
passage of treaties that cannot and will not be en-
forced, while they also inveigh against prepar-
edness, and shudder at action on behalf of our
own rights.

Let no man propose a treaty unless he has re-
duced it to concrete terms; has proposed it in
these concrete terms to his fellows, and has de-

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

termined whether, when thus made concrete, it
ought to be and will be observed. Take a few il-
lustrative cases. The ultra-pacifist movement,
the peace-at-any-price movement, has seemingly
been as strong on the Pacific slope as on the At-
lantic seaboard and in the interior. Congress-
men and editors have made speeches and written
articles in which they have advocated disar-
mament, and have demanded treaties by which
the United States would agree to arbitrate every-
thing. Worthy people, silly people, have en-
couraged schoolboys solemnly to debate such
questions.

Now let these congressmen and editors face
facts and be frank and truthful. When they ap-
plaud the passage of the thirty all-inclusive ar-
bitration-commission treaties that the Adminis-
tration has passed during the last year or so,
do they mean that they wish, if the Japanese take
Magdalena Bay or the Germans St. Thomas, to
discuss the matter through a commission for a
year without taking any action? Do they mean
that when American women are raped in Mexico
or American men murdered in our own territory
by Mexicans firing across the line, or when the
American flag is insulted and dishonored, we
shall appoint a commission to discuss the matter
for a year before taking action? Do they mean
that if a French or English submarine sinks a

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

ship crowded with non-combatants, as the Ger-
mans sank the Lusitania, and if American
women and children are again drowned whole-
sale on the high seas, we shall appoint a com-
mission to talk about it for a year and bind our-
selves to take no action prior to that time?

If they do mean these things, if our people
mean these things, then let them honestly say so.
FYom my standpoint such action would be incon-
ceivably base and cowardly. Nevertheless, it is
at least possible to accept the mental integrity
of the man taking it, if he announces from the
beginning that such is his intention. But it is
absolutely and grossly improper to take it unless
the concrete case to which the general principle
is to apply is thus set nakedly forth at the outset
and we agree to abide by action in such concrete
case.

Again, there are Pacific slope editors and pub-
lic men who have excitedly applauded that phase
of the peace-at-any-price propaganda in accord-
ance with which it is proposed that we shall bind
ourselves to arbitrate all questions, including
those of national honor and vital national in-
terest. The movement has been strong even in
California. Now, do these public men and edi-
tors who champion this form of peace movement
in California, Oregon and Washington mean
that we shall in good faith submit to outsiders

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

for arbitration the question whether or not there
shall be an unlimited immigration of Asiatics
to our shores? Do they mean that a court con-
taining judges from Japan, Siam, China, Vene-
zuela, Colombia and Ecuador, as well as from
the European powers, shall say whether or not
we have a right to decide what immigrants shall
come to our shores and here establish citizen-
ship ?

The Californian who does not believe in arbi-
trating the question whether there shall be such
unlimited immigration of Asiatics to California
is guilty of the grossest bad faith when he cham-
pions or fails to condemn such proposals, when
he votes for or approves of the thirty-odd peace-
commission treaties recently passed by the pres-
ent Administration and the all-inclusive arbitra-
tion treaties proposed by the preceding Adminis-
tration. I hold that to arbitrate the question
whether we should or should not allow the un-
limited immigration of Asiatics to our shores
would be a dreadful wrong. It is an almost
equally serious wrong to conclude a treaty spe-
cifically binding us to accept such arbitration,
and then to repudiate the treaty.

All this applies to the movement for inaugu-
rating at this time a "World League for Peace,"
of which the decrees are to be backed by force.
Before we make such a League for the future,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

let us in the present live up to our engagements
under The Hague Conventions and without de-
lay protest on behalf of Belgium. If we are not
willing to undergo the modest risk implied in
thus keeping the promise we have already made,
then for heaven's sake let us avoid the hypocrisy
of proposing a new world league, under which
we would guarantee to send armies over to co-
erce great military powers which decline to abide
by the decisions of an arbitral court. Above all,
let us avoid the infinite folly, the discreditable
folly, of agitating for such an agreement until
we have a naval and military force sufficient to
entitle us to speak with the voice of authority
when fronted with great military nations in in-
ternational matters. Let us not live in a realm
of childish make-believe. Let us not make new
and large promises in a spirit of grandiloquent
and elocutionary disregard of facts unless and
until we are willing by deeds to make good the
promises we have already made but have re-
frained from executing; until we are willing to
demand of our government that it live up to The
Hague Conventions, and, above all, that it de-
fend our own rights.

Now, the fact that these male and female pro-
fessional peace enthusiasts who have screamed
so busily for peace during the past year have been
afraid to make any concrete protest against

1 80

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

wrong is doubtless due primarily to sheer fear
on their part. They were afraid of the trouble
and effort implied in acting about Mexico.
Above all, they are afraid of Germany. Those
of them who are politicians are afraid of the
German- American vote; for these professional
pacifists have no sense of national honor and
are great encouragers of hyphenated American-
ism. But in addition they are terrorized, they
are cowed, by the ruthless spirit of German mili-
tarism. The Berlin Lokal Anzeiger spoke as
follows after the sinking of the Lusitania:

We do not wish to gain the love of the
Americans, but we desire to be respected
by them. The loss of the Lusitania will
earn that respect for us more than a hun-
dred battles won on land.

Of course, when the Lokal Anzeiger spoke of
inspiring "respect" in America, what it really
meant was that it would inspire fear. The mur-
der of women and children does not inspire re-
spect; but, unfortunately, it may inspire fear.
As a matter of fact, I think it did inspire fear
among our pacifists. There are plenty of Amer-
icans like myself who immensely admire the ef-
ficiency of the Germans in industry and in war,
the efficiency with which in this war they have
subordinated the whole social and industrial ac-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

tivity of the state to the successful prosecution
of the war, and who greatly admire the German
people, and regard the German strain as one of
the best and strongest strains in our composite
American blood; but who feel that the German
Government, the German governing class has in
this war shown such ruthless and domineering
disregard for the rights of others as to demand
emphatic and resolute action (not merely words
unbacked by action) on our part. Unfortu-
nately, this ruthless and brutal efficiency has, as
regards many men of the pacifist type, achieved
precisely the purpose it was intended to achieve.
As part of her program, Germany has counted
on the effect of terrorism upon all men of soft
nature. The sinking of the Lusitania was in-
tended primarily as terrorism; just as the use
of poison gas in the trenches (a use defensible
only if one also defends the poisoning of wells
and the torture of prisoners) was intended as
terrorism. The object — terrorization — has not
been achieved as regards the fighting men of
England, France, Belgium, Russia, Italy and
Servia. But it has had a distinct effect in
cowing timid persons everywhere. I do not be-
lieve it would have any effect in cowing the bulk
of our people if our people could be waked up
to what has happened; but I have no question
that it has had a very great effect in cowing that

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

noisy section of our people which has talked loud-
est about peace at any price. The people who
say of the present Administration that "at any
rate, it has kept us out of war with Mexico
or Germany ;" the people who say that we ought
not to act about the Lusitania; the people who
say we ought not to have acted on behalf of Bel-
gium, include in their ranks all of the per-
sons who are cowed by Germany, who are
afraid of what Germany would do if we stood up
for our own rights or for the rights of other and
weaker peoples. Recently, in certain circles,
some popularity has been achieved by a song en-
titled "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier"
— a song which ought always to be sung with a
companion piece entitled "I Didn't Raise My Girl
To Be a Mother." The two would stand on pre-
cisely the same moral level. This hymn, in con-
demnation of courage, has been sung in music
halls, and even in schools, with applause. Think
of such a song being sung by or of the mothers,
sisters and wives of the men who fought under
Washington in the Revolution, or of the men
who fought under Grant and Lee in the Civil
War! Those who applaud such a song are
wholly out of place at any patriotic celebration
on Decoration Day or the Fourth of July; and
most assuredly men of this abject type will be
easily affected by terrorism.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

The sinking of the Lusitania, the destruction
of Louvain, the shooting of the Belgians who
rallied to the defence of their flag precisely as
the men of Lexington and Bunker Hill once ral-
lied to the defence of theirs, the merciless thor-
oughness of the exploitation of the civilian popu-
lation of Northern France and Belgium, the ut-
ter ruthlessness shown in dealing not only with
men but with women and children — all this has
undoubtedly cowed and terrorized the average
American pacifist, the average peace-at-any-
price man in the United States. It has cowed
the type of man who cheers such a song as "I
Didn't Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier." It has
terrorized the type of man who makes speeches
and writes editorials or newspaper or magazine
articles on behalf of disarmament, on behalf of
universal arbitration, and against the Monroe
Doctrine. There is a Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde
in nations as in individuals ; and sheer terrorism
is often found working hand-in-hand with flabby
and timid international pacifism for the undo-
ing of righteousness and for the deification of
the most brutal form of successful militarism.

Mrs. Wharton has sent me the following Ger-
man poem on the sinking of the Lusitania, with
her translation:

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

HYMN OF THE LUSITANIA

(Translated from the German.)*

The swift sea sucks her death-shriek under
As the great ship reels and leaps asunder.
Crammed taffrail-high with her murderous

freight,
Like a straw on the tide she whirls to her

fate.

A warship she, though she lacked its coat,

And lustful for lives as none afloat,

A warship, and one of the foe's best

workers,
Not penned with her rusting harbor-shirk-

ers.

Now the Flanders guns lack their daily

bread,

And shipper and buyer are sick with dread,
For neutral as Uncle Sam may be
Your surest neutral's the deep green sea.

Just one ship sunk, with lives and shell,
And thousands of German gray-coats well !
And for each of her gray-coats, German

hate
Would have sunk ten ships with all their

freight.

* Poem reprinted by courtesy of N. Y. Herald.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Yea, ten such ships are a paltry fine
For one good life in our fighting line.
Let England ponder the crimson text:

TORPEDO, STRIKE! AND HURRAH FOR THE
NEXT!

This is not a pleasant poem. I do not envy
the person who could write with this exultation
of the death of women and children. It is a
manifestation of the policy of blood and iron
which should be pondered carefully by those
who, with voices of quivering timidity, are ad-
vocating our submission to such policies. Be it
remembered, moreover, that bad though it is to
do such a deed, it is even more contemptible to
submit to it. The policy of milk and water is
an even worse policy than the policy of blood
and iron. To sink a hundred American men,
women and children on the Lusitc&nia, in other
words, to murder them, was an evil thing; but
it was not quite as evil and it was nothing like as
contemptible as it was for this nation to rest sat-
isfied with governmental notes of protest couched
in elegant English, and with vaguely implied
threats which were not carried out. When a
man has warned another man not to slap his
wife's face, and the other man does it, the gentle-
man who has given the warning does not meet

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

the situation by treating elocution as a substitute
for action.

Mr. Bryan resigns the foremost position in the
American Cabinet and immediately addresses a
large meeting of Germans, where he was very
properly received with uproarious applause as
a faithful servant of the present German govern-
ment, as a man who, however amiable his inten-
tions, had in actual fact stood against the honor
and interest of America. Now, if Mr. Bryan
were a German, the German government would
not for one moment permit him to make the kind
of address against Germany that the Germans
applauded him for making against his own coun-
try and ours. The success of the German policy
of blood-and-iron largely depends upon their pos-
sible rivals and opponents adopting a policy of
milk-and-water. The blood-and-iron statesman
of one nation finds in the milk-and-water states-
man of another nation the man predestined
through the ages to be his ally and his tool.

A number of persons, including especially the
ultra-pacifists, have strongly objected to the
statement that this country should have acted on
behalf of Belgium, and have done this on the
ground that we have declared as a nation that we
did not intend to be drawn into "entangling alli-
ances" in Europe. Yet the same persons now
advocate our going into a league to enforce the

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results of universal arbitration, which, of course,
represents the "entangling" of ourselves in a for-
eign alliance on the largest possible scale. It also
represents an agreement on our part to wage of-
fensive war on behalf of others, although many
of the persons favoring such an agreement are
opposed to the very moderate policy of making us
fit to protect our own rights in defensive war. It
is idle to make promises on behalf of a movement
for world peace unless we intend to live up to
them. If so, the first step is to live up to the
promises we have already made, and not to try
to sneak out of them on the ground that to ful-
fill them means to abandon our "policy of re-
fusal to be entangled in foreign alliances."

This attitude of the ultra-pacifists is merely
another illustration of the necessity of subordi-
nating elocution in advocacy of universal world
peace to action (not merely elocution) to meet
more immediate and vital needs. It is utterly
useless to advocate our entering into such a pro-
posed league until we have prepared in military
fashion to make our action effective and until
we have seriously resolved to live up to our
promises — and, as a consequence, to make but
few promises. Therefore, at this moment all
agitation for such a league merely offers an op-
portunity for the people who want to talk and
to do nothing else. It gives them the chance to

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

avoid the performance of immediate duty by
empty elocution for something which is in the
remote future and which cannot possibly be
achieved until the immediate duty has been effec-
tively performed. In my book, "America and
the World War," I have outlined the only pos-
sibly feasible plan for securing world peace that
has yet been propounded. But it is waste of time
to advocate such a plan until we have adopted
and put into effect a policy of national military
preparedness, and until we take the trouble to
find out what treaties — promises — mean, and to
refuse to make them unless they are to be kept.
To enter into the proposed "League of Peace"
would mean that we promised, under certain con-
ditions, to undertake offensive war on behalf of
others. It would be ludicrous to make such a
promise until we have shown that we are willing
to undertake defensive war on behalf of our-
selves.

In 1814, a little over a century ago, in the
course of the War of 1812, a small British army
landed in Chesapeake Bay. It defeated twice its
number of "free-born American citizens," with-
out training and discipline, who "had leaped to
arms," as Mr. Bryan says, or become "an armed
citizenry," as Mr. Wilson puts it. It then burned
the public buildings at Washington. The "armed
citizenry" — upon whose potentiality President

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Wilson relied as an excuse for signal failure to
make any preparation to do our duty by adequate
preparation in view of the terrible world war
now going on and of the situation in Mexico —
fled with such unanimity and rapidity that only
a score or so lost their lives. Thereupon the re-
mainder, together with all the American editors
and public men who for years had been scream-
ing for peace and announcing that there was no
need of preparing against war, instead of ex-
pressing their hearty shame and repentance for
the national failure to prepare, became hyster-
ical in attacking — with words only — the hostile
army for having burned Washington. The
British army a century ago was as profoundly
indifferent to this attack as the war lords of Ger-
many to-day are to our prattle about the Lusi-
tania or the resolutions of our peace societies,
and the boasts of our political orators on the
Fourth of July. Such indifference was, and is,
entirely justifiable. It was not a nice thing to
burn the public buildings of Washington; but it
was an infinitely worse thing for this country,
after two years of war, to be utterly unable to
protect its capital. It was not a nice thing to
kill our women and children on the Lusitania;
but it was an even meaner and more contemptible
thing for us to fail to act with instant decision
thereon — and had we so acted in the case of the

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

Gul flight, a few days previously, the Lusitania
would never have been sunk.

Every right-minded man utterly despises a
coward in private life. Cowardice is the un-
pardonable sin in a man. A corrupt man can
be reformed. Many a corrupt man, both in poli-
tics and business, has been reformed within the
past score of years, has realized the evils of cor-
ruption and is now a first-class citizen. In the
same way a coward who appreciates that coward-
ice is a sin, an unpardonable sin if persevered in,
may train himself so as, first to act like a brave
man, and then finally to feel like and therefore to
be a brave man. But the coward who excuses his
cowardice, who tries to cloak it behind lofty
words, who perseveres in it, and does not appre-
ciate his own infamy, is beyond all hope. The
peace-at-any-price people, the universal and all-
inclusive arbitration people, and most of the men
and women who have taken the lead in the paci-
fist movement in this country during the last five
or ten years, are preaching international cow-
ardice.

Sometimes these professional pacifists preach
such cowardice openly. At other times they
preach the utter flabbiness and feebleness, moral
and physical, which inevitably breeds cowardice.
It is a dreadful thing to think that in the event
of war brave men would have to shed their

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blood ; it is a worse thing to think that these fee-
ble folk would purchase their own ignoble safety
by the blood of others. The men and women
guilty of such preaching and such practice are
thoroughly bad citizens. The worst of them, of
course, are those in the colleges, and those who
profess to speak for the colleges; for to them
much has been given and from them much should
be expected. The college boys who adopt the
professional pacifist views, who make peace
leagues and preach the doctrines of international
cowardice, are unfitting themselves for any ca-
reer more manly than that of a nursemaid. A
grown-up of the professional pacifist type is not
an impressive figure ; but the college boy who de-
liberately elects to be a "sissy" should be replaced
in the nursery and spanked.

It is to be regretted that we do not learn his-
tory aright. Allusion has been made above to
the War of 1812. Had Washington or men who
carried out Washington's policy been in charge
of our government during the first fifteen years
of the nineteenth century, there would probably
have been no war with Great Britain in 1812,
or if there had been we would have been com-
pletely and overwhelmingly successful. But the
great opponent of Washington's ideals, Thomas
Jefferson, gave the tone to our governmental pol-
icies during that time. He announced that his

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

"passion was peace" — not as strong an expres-
sion as "being too proud to fight," but sufficiently
noxious. He and his followers declined to pre-
pare a regular army and refused to upbuild the
Navy. The very Congress that declared war on
Great Britain declined to increase our Navy. Yet
if at that time we had had an efficient navy of
twenty battleships or an efficient mobile regular
army of twenty thousand men, the war would
not have taken place at all or else it would have
ended in complete and sweeping victory the sum-
mer it was declared.

We trusted, however, to the "armed citizenry"
of whom Mr. Wilson speaks and to the voluntary
efforts of "the million men who spring to arms
between dawn and sunset," described in Mr.
Bryan's oratory. We trusted to the few frigates
prepared by the men of Washington's school be-
fore the Jeffersonians came to power. These
frigates did their duty well and but for them it
is possible that our country would have broken
in pieces under the intolerable shame of our fail-
ure on land. Nevertheless, our small cruisers
could produce only a moral and not a material
effect upon the war. On land for two years we
were unable to do anything effective at all.
When the war had begun, it was too late to make
efficient preparations; and in any event we did
not try. We raised a body of over a hundred

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thousand militiamen under the volunteer system.
These militiamen were gathered in camps where
they sickened of various diseases; but we were
never able to get them against the foe in any
numbers, except on one or two occasions, such as
at Bladensburg. Mind you, they were naturally
good enough men. The individuals who ran at
Bladensburg were the sons of the men of York-
town, the fathers of the men of Gettysburg.
What they needed was preparation by long train-
ing in advance; training in the field, not merely
in an armory or on a drill ground.

The same thing was true of our Civil War.
In 1 86 1 both of the contending armies at Bull
Run could have been beaten with ease by a Euro-
pean army of regulars half the size of either.
In 1863 there was not an army in Europe which
could have contended on equal terms with either
of the armies that fought at Gettysburg. In
1814, after two years of exertion, Brown, Scott,
and a few other officers like them on the northern
frontier, developed a tiny army as good as could
be found anywhere, and Andrew Jackson, a real
military genius, performed the same feat for the
few thousand Tennesseeans and Louisianians
whom he commanded at New Orleans.

But the War of 1812 was not a victorious war
for us. At best it is possible to call it a draw.
It was a thoroughly discreditable war from the

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standpoint of our people as a whole. The land
officers I have named above, and a few thousand
troops, not more than ten thousand all told, who
served under them, did well. So did the officers
and crews of our tiny navy and the shipwrights
who built the ships. These men, and a very few
others, deserved the highest credit. We of to-
day owe them much. It is only because of their
existence that Americans can think of the War
of 1812 without unmixed shame. But the bulk
of our people, and the politicians, from the
President down, who represented our people,
made a wretched showing in that war; and be-
cause of this showing the Union came very near
splitting up. If history were rightly taught, this
fact would be brought out clearly in our schools ;
and the pacifists, the peace-at-any-price men, the
men who shirk preparedness and who chatter
about the efficacy of salvation to be secured by
diluted moral mush, would not have the clear
field they now have.

Men cannot and will not fight well unless they
are physically prepared ; and they cannot and will
not fight if, through the generations, they elabo-
rately unfit themselves by weakening their own
moral fiber. China furnishes the greatest exam-
ple, and a living and contemporary example. Mr.
Bryan recently announced that instead of war,
which he regarded as outworn, he wished to try

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"persuasion." Evidently he was under the im-
pression that persuasion was something new in
the annals of history. Let Mr. Bryan and his
fellow pacifists read history; and, if they won't
read history, let them at least look at affairs that
are contemporary. A sillier falsehood has never
been uttered than the falsehood that "war settles
nothing." War settled the independence of this
country; war settled the question of union, and
war settled the question of slavery. Pacifists
pretend to speak in the interests of morality. It
is a poor thing for professed moralists to rest
their case on a falsehood, which they must know
to be a falsehood. Many of the greatest events
of history have been settled by war. Many of
the greatest advances in humanity have been due
to successful wars for righteousness.

Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Af-
rica at this moment solely because the seventh
century Christians of Asia and Africa, in addi-
tion to being rent asunder among themselves by
bitter sectarian animosities — and sectarian in-
tolerance and animosity stand for most that is
evil in Christianity — had trained themselves not
to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to
fight. Christianity was saved in Europe solely
because the peoples of Europe fought. If the
peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth cen-
turies, and on up to and including the seven-

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

teenth century, had not possessed a military
equality with, and gradually a growing superior-
ity over, the Mohammedans who invaded Europe,
Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan,
and the Christian religion would be extermi-
nated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had
complete sway, wherever the Christians have
been unable to resist them by the sword, Christi-
anity has ultimately disappeared. From the ham-
mer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski,
Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the
fact that it was able to show that it could and
would fight as well as the Mohammedan ag-
gressor.

China is the great living example of unpre-
paredness, of pacifism, of the peace-at-any-
price spirit, of the effort to preserve territory
and national self-respect by "persuasion" and
not by the sword. In consequence the English,
the French, the Russians, the Japanese, control
one-half of the territory of China, and the re-
maining territory, under the pressure of Japan,
is at this moment losing all right to be considered
an independent and self-respecting people. Well-
meaning persons who treat peace pageants, peace
parades, peace conferences and minor movements
of similar nature as of consequence, are guilty
of an error which makes their conduct foolish.
Those of them who champion the exaltation of

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peace above righteousness and the abandonment
of national power of self-defence — without
which there never has been and never will be
either national heroism or national manliness —
will do well to study China.

It is mere gong-beating, it is the mere sound-
ing of tom-toms and rattles, for our people to
get together in conference at the present time
and declare for universal peace and announce
that they wish a world league by which they will
agree to arbitrate everything and enforce the re-
sult by arms. Of course in no event should we
agree to arbitrate everything. But the prime
point to be considered at the moment is that un-
til we show that we possess force, that we are
willing to use it when necessary, and that we
make no promises save those that ought to be and
will be carried out, we shall be utterly useless to
do anything for righteousness, whether through
these leagues or in any other fashion.

Every peace body, whether religious or hu-
manitarian, philosophic or political, and all ad-
vocates of peace, whether in public or private
life, work nothing but mischief, and, save in so
far as mere silliness prevents it, very serious mis-
chief, unless they put righteousness first and
peace next. Every league that calls itself a
Peace League is championing immorality unless
it clearly and explicitly recognizes the duty of

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

putting righteousness before peace and of being
prepared and ready to enforce righteousness by
war if necessary; and it is idle to promise to
wage offensive war on behalf of others until we
have shown that we are able and willing to wage
defensive war on behalf of ourselves. The man
who fears death more than dishonor, more than
failure to perform duty, is a poor citizen; and
the nation that regards war as the worst of all
evils and the avoidance of war as the highest
good is a wretched and contemptible nation, and
it is well that it should vanish from the face of
the earth.

If our people really believed what the pacifists
and the German- fearing politicians advocate, if
they really feared war above anything else and
really had sunk to the Chinese level — from which
the best and bravest and most honorable China-
men are now striving to lift their people — then
it would be utterly hopeless to help the United
States. In such case, the best thing that could
befall it would be to have the Germans, or the
Japanese, or some other people that still retains
virility, come over here to rule and oppress a na-
tion of feeble pacifists, unfit to be anything but
hewers of wood and drawers of water for their
masters.

But I do not for one moment admit that the
American people has sunk or will sink to such a

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level. We are foolish and shortsighted and we
permit the prattlers to misrepresent us. But at
bottom the heart of this people is sound. We
celebrate Decoration Day and Independence Day
on the 3Oth of May and the 4th of July. We be-
lieve in the men of the Revolution, in the men
of the Civil War and in the women who did
"raise their sons to be soldiers" for the right.
We know that in itself war is neither moral nor
immoral, that the test of the righteousness of
war is the object and purpose for which it is
waged. Therefore, it is worth while for our
people seriously to consider the problems ahead
of them; and the first problem is the problem of
preparedness.

The prime and all-important lesson to learn
is that while preparedness will not guarantee a
nation against war, unpreparedness eventually
insures not merely war, but utter disaster. Take
what has happened in the last twelve months at
home and abroad. Preparedness has saved
France from the unspeakable shame that befell
it in 1870. Every Frenchman holds his head
higher now than any Frenchman has held it in
forty-five years. England suffers because she
has not prepared. If her army had been pre-
pared as Lord Roberts wished it to be prepared,
if she had had universal military service on the
German model, if she had copied the admirable

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

German efficiency, military, industrial and so-
cial (and had then, unlike Germany, applied it
with regard for, instead of with disregard for,
the rights of others), she would have been able
to rescue Belgium and France from invasion and
her own position would now be absolutely as-
sured. She was well prepared from a naval point
of view and so was able to protect herself on the
ocean. But, when she guaranteed Belgium's
neutrality, she abandoned her sea frontier and
pushed her land frontier forward to the German
border beyond Liege. She failed to realize this
fact — just as we have failed to realize that our
own moral frontier is not our own seaboard, but
is overseas, in Alaska and Hawaii and the Pan-
ama Canal Zone.

But Belgium, when compared with Switzer-
land, offers the most complete example. In
many respects Belgium a year ago stood strik-
ingly near to where the United States stands to-
day. She had not been quite as shortsighted as
we have shown and are now showing ourselves
to be; but she had been very shortsighted. She
was an absolutely peaceful and exceedingly pros-
perous country. She had a great industrial pop-
ulation. For many years the wiser among her
people, including especially, by the way, the wis-
est representatives of the labor element, the So-
cialists and others, had preached preparedness,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

so that the country might be saved from invasion
by its great military neighbors. But her inter-
national policy was determined by the pacifists
and peace-at-any-price men, the men and women
who said that it was "immoral to fight" and that
"war settled nothing," and the other men and
women who said that nobody would ever attack
Belgium because she was peaceful, and never
committed aggression, and that all that was nec-
essary to national well-being was business pros-
perity, and attention to measures of internal re-
form. These persons were successful in pre-
venting any adequate preparation. Only a very
inadequate one had been attempted and that only
during the last year or two. This inadequate
preparation was directly responsible for disaster
so overwhelming as to wipe out what had been
built up by generations of patient industry.

Switzerland meanwhile, the most peaceful
country in Europe, had energetically taken full
measures for her self-defence. Switzerland had
an army of 400,000 men, highly efficient. Bel-
gium, according to her population, on the same
basis would have had an army of 700,000 men.
If she had had such an army and had acted pre-
cisely as Switzerland acted, Belgian territory
would now be in Belgian hands and the line
of western war in Europe, representing what
has been for fourteen months a stalemate, would

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PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

have left Belgium on the right instead of
on the wrong side ; and she would have been free
instead of trodden down and wasted under an
appalling tyranny. No one acquainted with re-
cent German military history, and with German
military plans for the past twenty years, doubts
for a moment that the German invasion would
have taken place as quickly through Switzerland
as through Belgium if it had been safe. But
Belgium's army was only about one-sixth the
size of the Swiss army. The small Belgian army
fought valiantly; the conduct of the Belgian peo-
ple during the last eleven months has been above
all praise ; and they have rendered mankind their
debtor by their heroism. But the heroism came
too late to be of avail. It was too late to prepare,
or to make good the lack of preparedness, when
once the Germans crossed the border. Switzer-
land had prepared in advance and Switzerland
is at peace now, while the soil of Belgium has
been trodden into bloody mire. The physical na-
ture of the two countries has nothing to do with
the difference. A century ago, Napoleon's arm-
ies treated Switzerland as cavalierly as Germany
to-day treats Belgium ; and for the same reason ;
because Switzerland was then utterly unpre-
pared.

Let our people take warning. Look at what
has happened in Asia at the same time. Japan

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PEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

was prepared; Japan was ready to fight. With
trivial loss she has made enormous gains and
now dominates China. China was not ready to
fight; she had not prepared. In natural re-
sources, in territory, in population, she many
times over surpassed Japan; but she had com-
mitted the cardinal sin of neglecting to prepare;
and she now is at Japan's mercy and her very
existence is a matter of doubt.

The most certain way for a nation to invite
disaster is to be opulent, self-assertive and un-
armed. A nation can no more prepare for self-
defence when war actually threatens than a
spoiled college "sissy" of the pacifist type can
defend himself if a young tough chooses to in-
sult him; and unlike the sissy, the nation cannot
under such conditions appeal to the police. Now
and then to insure a house means that some
scoundrel burns the house down in order to get
the insurance. But we do not in consequence
abandon insurance against fire. Now and then
a nation prepares itself for a war of aggression.
But this is no argument against preparedness in
order to repel aggression. Preparedness against
war is the only efficient form of national peace
insurance.

204

CHAPTER VII
UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND is UNCLE SAM

OVER forty years ago Charles Dickens
wrote as follows of the United States:
"In these times in which I write it is honorably
remarkable for protecting its subjects wherever
they may travel with a dignity and a determina-
tion which is a model for England." Ulysses
Grant was then President of the United States.
Like Washington and Lincoln and Andrew
Jackson, he was an American who was not
too proud to fight. Those of my countrymen
who are still faithful to the old American tra-
dition cannot but feel with bitter shame the con-
trast between the conditions Charles Dickens
thus described and the conditions at the present
moment.

The policy of watchful waiting, a policy popu-
lar among governmental chiefs of a certain type
ever since the days of Ethelred the Unready and
for thousands of years anterior to that not
wholly fortunate ruler, has failed, as of course
it always does fail in the presence of serious dif-
ficulty and of a resolute and ruthless foe. We

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have tried every possible expedient save only the
application of wisdom and resolution. It has
been said that we have not tried war; but this
statement can be made only by those who are
inexact in their terminology. Of course, if any
one's feelings are soothed by saying that when
we took Vera Cruz, suffered a loss of a hundred
and twenty men killed and wounded and in re-
turn killed and wounded several hundred Mexi-
cans, we were waging peace and not waging
war, why there is no particular objection to this
individual gaining whatever comfort is afforded
by using words which misdescribe facts. But
this is all the comfort he can gain. As a natural
result of the impression created on foreigners by
our conduct in Mexico, we were forced to hostile
action in Haiti and a number of our men and our
opponents were killed and wounded. Appar-
ently we "waged peace" in Haiti, much as we
"waged peace" in Mexico — and in Mexico the
end of the war or peace or whatever it was
that we waged was that we withdrew without get-
ting the result which our Government had an-
nounced that it would get when it took Vera
Cruz.

We of the United States have had a twofold
duty imposed on us during the last year. We
have owed a duty to ourselves. We have owed
a duty to others. We have failed in both.

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UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE SAM

Primarily both failures are due to the mis-
chievous effects of the professional pacifist
agitation which became governmental nearly five
years ago when the then Administration at
Washington sought to negotiate various all-in-
clusive arbitration treaties under which we aban-
doned the right to stand up for our own vital
interest and national honor. Very reluctantly
we who believe in peace, but in the peace of
righteousness, have been forced to the conclusion
that the most prominent leaders of the peace agi-
tation of the past ten years in this country, so
far as they have accomplished anything that was
not purely fatuous, have accomplished nothing
but mischief. This result of the activities of
these professional pacifist agitators has been due
mainly to the fact that they have consistently
placed peace ahead of righteousness, and have
resolutely refused to look facts in the face if they
thought the facts were unpleasant.

It is as foolish to ignore common sense in this
matter as in any other matter. It is as wicked
to exalt peace at the expense of morality as it
is to exalt war at the expense of morality. The
greatest service that Lincoln rendered to the
cause of permanent peace and to the greater
cause of justice and of righteousness was ren-
dered by him when, with unshaken firmness, he
accepted four years of grinding warfare rather

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than yield to the professional pacifists of his day
— the Copperheads. Washington's greatest serv-
ice to peace was rendered by similar action on
his part. And be it remembered that never in
history have two men rendered greater service to
the only kind of peace worth having for honor-
able men and women than was rendered by these
two heroes who did not shrink from righteous
war.

Failure to perform duty to others is merely
aggravated by failure to perform duty to our-
selves. To pay twenty-five million dollars
blackmail to Colombia does not atone for our
timid refusal to do our duty by Belgium. It
merely aggravates it. Moreover, it should al-
ways be remembered that in these matters the
weak cannot be helped by the weak ; that the bru-
tal wrongdoer cannot be checked by the coward
or by the fat, boastful, soft creature who does
not take the trouble to make himself fit to en-
force his words by his deeds. Preparedness
means forethought, effort, trouble, labor.
Therefore soft men, selfish, indolent men, men
absorbed in money-getting, and the great mass
of well-meaning men who shrink from perform-
ing the new duties created by new needs, eagerly
welcome a political leader who will comfort them,
and relieve their secret sense of shame, by using

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UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE SAM

high-sounding names to describe their shortcom-
ings.

An adroit politician can unquestionably gain
many votes in such fashion, if he exalts unpre-
paredness as a duty, if he praises peace and ad-
vocates neutrality, as both in themselves moral
— even although the "peace" and "neutrality"
may be conditioned on the failure to do our duty
either to others or to ourselves. Such a politi-
cian, if he excels in the use of high-sounding
words, may win votes and gain office by thus
pandering to men who wish to hear their selfish-
ness, their short-sightedness or their timidity ex-
alted into virtues. But he is sapping the moral
vitality of the people whom he misleads.

It has been an evil thing that this nation,
which for five years has been strutting as the
champion of peace and holding conferences to
denounce war and praising its wealthy citizens
for founding peace leagues, has contented itself
with these futile activities and has not dared to
strike a blow, has not dared even to say a word
for righteousness in the concrete, while wrong
has been at least temporarily triumphant during
the past eighteen months. It is an even worse
thing that during this last eighteen months we
have wholly failed to prepare to defend our own
homes from disaster.

Nor can we, the people of the United States,
209

escape blame for ourselves by putting it upon
our public servants. Unquestionably the Admin-
istration has been guilty of culpable indifference
to the honor and the interest of the nation dur-
ing the last year and a half; but it has been guilty
in this fashion precisely because it could count
upon popular support ; and therefore the ultimate
blame rests on the people, that is, on us. It may
well be that political gain will come to the politi-
cians who appeal to what is selfish and timid
in the hearts of our people, and who comfort
soft self-indulgence by praising it as virtuous.
A correspondent from Virginia, who has always
been opposed to me politically, writes: "The
most depressing feature of the present situation
is that the great majority of the American people
strongly approve of the stand of President Wil-
son and the other apostles of Buchananism.
Every one is so satisfied with his money-mak-
ing and comforts, the moving-picture shows,
and his automobile that there is horror at
the thought of death and of need and hunger and
fatigue. There is a self-righteous disposition to
regard heroism as wickedness, and to consider all
soldiers as wicked and immoral. Teace with
honor' is on the lips of many when the brutal
alternatives are war with honor or peace with
everlasting shame and dishonor. The Admin-
istration is thoroughly terrorized by the Ger-

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UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE SAM

mans. The people of this section are for peace
at any price." This may be the general senti-
ment of the American people, and if so, then
those who pander to it will profit politically. But
they will win profit for themselves by helping
to debase their fellow-countrymen.

When the world war broke out over a year
ago, it was simply inexcusable for this people not
at once to begin the work of preparation. If we
had done so, we would now have been able to
make our national voice felt effectively in help-
ing to bring about peace with justice — and no
other peace ought to be allowed. But not one
thing has been done by those in power to make
us ready. On the contrary, in his message to
Congress of December, 1914, the President elab-
orately argued in favor of keeping ourselves
unprepared, expressing the hope that, if we thus
preserved immunity from hatred by keeping our-
selves beneath contempt, we might create a situ-
ation where he would be employed as a go-be-
tween, as the man to fetch and carry among the
warring powers when the time for peace nego-
tiations arrived.

The attitude of the German- American press in
this country toward the subsequent notes of the
President to Germany throws the true light on
this fond anticipation. These hyphenated Amer-
ican newspapers have shown that their entire

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loyalty is to that portion of the compound term
which precedes the hyphen, and that they trans-
late the term German- American as meaning that
they are Germans who use their position in
America as a means for endeavoring to force
America to sacrifice its own honor and the in-
terests of mankind in order to serve the Ger-
man Government. The professional German-
Americans here, acting, as has been shown by
President Wilson's ardent supporters in New
York, with the connivance of the Administra-
tion, and by the direct instigation of the Ger-
man Government, have deliberately campaigned
against the United States, have exulted in the
German atrocities, and have openly stated that
the support of the German- American vote was
conditioned upon the Administration's attitude
toward Germany, and that Germany would let
President Wilson play a part in the peace ne-
gotiations only if he actively or passively helped
Germany in the war. He has found them hard
taskmasters ; and they have so angered his other
masters, the American people, that the latter
have forced him to belated and half-hearted ac-
tion. After eighteen months he has begun feebly
to advocate an imperfect preparedness. After
mere conversation for seven months over the
Lusitania with Germany he finally becomes an-
gry with Austria over the Ancona — for Austria

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UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE SAM

is weaker than Germany and it is safer to be
angry with her. But he takes no action about the
various other ships which were sunk — there was
little popular excitement about these ships.

Men are not to be seriously blamed for failure
to see or foresee what is hidden from all but
eyes that are almost prophetic. The most far-
seeing Americans, since the days of Washington,
have always stood in advance of popular feeling
in the United States so far as national prepar-
edness against war is concerned. But on the
other hand not a few of the leaders have been
much less advanced than the people they led.
And under right leadership the people have al-
ways been willing to grapple with facts that were
fairly obvious. They have refused to do this
when the official leadership was wrong.

Twenty years after the Civil War we had let
our Army and Navy sink to a point below that
of any third-class power in Europe. Then we
began to build up the Navy. The Navy is more
important to us than any other branch of the
service; and gradually our people grew to ap-
preciate this. In 1898 came the Spanish War.
We did badly; but the Spaniards did worse. As
that profound philosopher who writes under the
name of "Mr. Dooley" put it: "We were in a
dream; but the Spaniards were in a trance."
However, as a result we did bring our Navy up to

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the fourth or fifth position among the navies of
the big powers, and we did raise our Army until
it was capable of being expanded to a hun-
dred thousand. But immediately that the war
was over Congress, probably, I regret to say, re-
flecting popular indifference, sagged back.*
In 1901, under the malign leadership of cer-

* Certain adherents of the Administration, in endeavoring
untruthfully to defend it, have actually asserted that while
I was President I did not myself do enough to upbuild the
Army and Navy! Of course these individuals know per-
fectly well that the criticism aimed at me while I was Pres-
ident was invariably because I was supposed to be too mili-
taristic, and my critics always condemned me for endeavor-
ing to force Congress to go farther than it was willing to go
in building up the Army and Navy. During my term in the
Presidency the Navy was increased threefold in strength
and at least sixfold in efficiency; the Army was certainly
doubled in efficiency. I did my best to get Congress to do
much more than it would do. I accomplished the very
utmost that by appeal and argument I could get the people
to support. Beginning with my first message to Congress,
on December 3d, 1901, and in every year in my subsequent
messages, I at length and in detail argued for "preparedness
in advance," for "forethought and preparation," in building
up our naval and military forces, in favor of training "for
years" in advance our crews, for "no cessation in adding to
the effective units of the fighting fleet," for a general staff,
for keeping only the military posts and navy yards demanded
by military needs, etc., etc. I repeated these arguments in
dozens of speeches in every quarter of the Union. My mes-
sages to Congress and these speeches, in which I so often
and at such length argued for full preparedness in advance,
are open to any one who has access to a public library.

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tain men on the Senate Naval Committee, Con-
gress actually stopped making any appropriation
whatever for fighting ships. During the suc-
ceeding eight years, however, the interrupted
work was resumed. The Navy was steadily built
up in numbers and still more in efficiency ; shoot-
ing and fleet maneuvering on a large scale were
for the first time treated as they should have
been treated; and the result was that in 1909 our
fleet stood second among the fleets of the world
and was in shape to guarantee us against the
aggression of any foreign power. This was then
our first duty; and it had been accomplished.
Meanwhile the efficiency of the Army had like-
wise been greatly increased, as was shown by the
contrast between the handling of the expedition-
ary force to Cuba under General Barry and the
handling of the army corps under General Shaf-
ter six or eight years previously. But very prop-
erly the men who were alive to the need of na-
tional defence had to devote their chief attention
to the Navy; and it was impossible to get the
public to consider both our real military and our
real naval needs.

Then came the awful cataclysm of the present
world war. During the years 1913 and 1914 our
Navy deteriorated with frightful rapidity. This
was partly due to the way it was handled
in connection with our absurd and humiliating

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little make-believe war with Mexico. Our ships
were not maneuvered and were never trained in
fleet or squadron gunnery during these two
years; and in consequence of this, among other
causes, our fleet now stands certainly not higher
than fifth among the nations in point of effi-
ciency and is not fit at this moment to defend
us from serious attack.

The events of the last year have shown that
all who believed that the most frightful wrong-
doing by warlike nations could be averted by the
opinion of civilized mankind as a whole have
been utterly in error. What is happening in this
year 1916 shows that not the slightest particle
of advance in international morality has been
made during the century that has elapsed since
the close of the Napoleonic wars. This failure
is quite as much due to the misconduct of the
pacifists as to the misconduct of the militarists.
The milk-and-water statesmanship of the Amer-
ican Government during the past year has been a
direct aid to the statesmanship of blood-and-iron
across the water; it may not be as wicked, but
it is far more contemptible. The United States
has signally and culpably failed to keep its prom-
ises made in the Hague Conventions, and to stand
for the right. Instead, it has taken refuge in the
world-old neutrality between right and wrong
which is always so debasing for the man prac-

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UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE SAM

tising it. As has been well said, such a neutral is
the ignoblest work of God.

There was much excuse for a general failure
of Americans to understand the danger to Amer-
ica prior to what happened in this world war.
But now there is no excuse whatever. Now,
thanks to our own feeble shirking of duty, we
know that if any great nation menaces us, no
matter how innocent of offence we may be, we
have absolutely nothing to expect from other na-
tions. Most assuredly the neutrality we have
kept between right and wrong when Belgium was
trodden under foot will be repaid us if our turn
comes. Small blame will attach to the nations
which grinningly quote our own neutral procla-
mations and say that they themselves intend in
their turn to be neutral not only in deed but
even in thought, if any European or Asiatic mili-
tary power concludes to take from us the Panama
Canal or Hawaii or Porto Rico or to seize and
hold for ransom New York or San Francisco.
Moreover, this war has made it evident that
armies of hundreds of thousands of men can be
transported not only across the narrow but
across the broad seas. England's great navy has
made the ocean a barrier to her foes, and a high-
way for herself, and it is only Britain's navy
which has saved her from utter disgrace.

Let us profit alike by Belgium's heroic example
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in the present, and by the terrible fate brought
on her by her lack of forethought and prepared-
ness in the past. At present, in spite of the shat-
tering disasters of the last year and a quarter,
and although only a tiny fraction of her territory
is left unconquered, Belgium's army is stronger
and more efficient than ever before. It numbers
about 120,000 fighting men, with over 400 guns
and thousands of machine guns and in addition
first-class services of aviation, food supply, sani-
tation, manufacture of ammunition and the like.
There are fourteen centers for the drilling of
recruits, and excellent schools for the officers.
The morale of the army is extraordinary. I
know of nothing finer in history than the way
in which this army has been raised and main-
tained by the Belgian nation in the midst of a
cataclysm well-nigh unparalleled in the history
of nations. But this cataclysm, this frightful
and crushing disaster to Belgium, occurred pre-
cisely because no such effort was put forth be-
fore the event. The splendid heroism of the
present can only repair a small part of the horri-
ble damage due to the unpreparedness of the
past. Belgium has suffered the last extremities
of woe; and she would have gone almost un-
scathed if before the war came she had prepared
an army as strong relatively to her then strength

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as the present army is strong relative to her pres-
ent weakness.

England, during the first year of the war, af-
forded a lamentable example of the punishment
that will surely in the end befall any nation which
fails to take its duties seriously and to prepare
herself thoroughly in advance by universal mili-
tary training of her citizens, and by a high stand-
ard of loyal social efficiency, for the evil day
when war may come on the land. Her navy did
admirably from the beginning — thanks to men
like Lord Fisher, who built it up, and to Prince
Louis of Battenberg, who mobilized it in the
nick of time, with an efficiency comparable to that
which marked the mobilization of the German
army. Her soldiers at the front behaved splen-
didly. But the English people as a whole did not
appear to advantage when compared, for in-
stance, with the French, until more than a year
had gone by. This was true of their capitalists.
It was still more true of their workingmen — com-
pare their striking workmen with the French
workingmen, who toiled night and day, and ex-
changed brotherly greetings with the generals at
the front. It was true of their men in Parliament
and the press who opposed universal military
service. Over a year passed before they began
to produce the instruments and munitions of war
in a way at all comparable with what was being

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done in France and Germany. Her people have
as a whole volunteered in magnificent manner;
but those who wished to shirk their duty were
permitted to shirk their duty, and this was a thor-
oughly evil thing. Now, eighteen months after
the outbreak of the war, her people are working
with extraordinary resolution and patriotism,
but it is not possible wholly to undo the evil done
by the lack of preparedness in advance.

If there were no lesson in this for us, I cer-
tainly should not dwell on the fact. The im-
portant point for us to remember is that if Eng-
land did not do as well as she ought to have done,
she did infinitely better than we would have
done; and moreover she has learned her lesson
and is doing well, whereas we have not learned
our lesson, and our national leaders, executive,
legislative, and non-official, from Mr. Wilson and
Mr. Bryan to such Congressmen as Messrs.
Kitchin and Hay, are still acting in a way that
brings dishonor to the American name and that
is fraught with the gravest peril to the future
of the nation. Capital books have been inspired
by this war; Owen Wister's "Pentecost of
Calamity," for instance; but in its practical
teachings the best book that this war has pro-
duced is Oliver's "Ordeal by Battle." I wish
that every American would read Mr. Oliver's
book and would realize that everything there said

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as to both the shortcomings and the needs of the
English people applies with far greater force to
the American people at the present time. Col.
Arthur Lee, M.P., in an address to his con-
stituents which all Americans should read, has
clearly placed before the British people the vital
needs and duties of the hour. Our politicians and
our self-styled humanitarians and peace lovers,
if they would read this address with open minds,
would profit much.

Most certainly we should avoid with horror
the ruthlessness and brutality and the cynical
indifference to international right which the
Government of Germany has; shown during the
past year, and we should shun, as we would shun
the plague, the production in this country of a
popular psychology like that which in Germany
has produced a public opinion that backs the
Government in its actions in Belgium, and cheers
popular songs which exult in the slaughter of
women and children on the high seas. But if we
value the heritage bequeathed to us by Washing-
ton and saved for us by Lincoln, we will at once
begin the effort to emulate the German efficiency,
efficiency which is not only military but also so-
cial and industrial.

We in America claim that a democracy can be
as efficient for defence as an autocracy, as a des-
potism. It is idle to make this claim, it is idle

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to utter windy eloquence in Fourth of July
speeches, and to prate in public documents about
our greatness and our adherence to democratic
principles and the mission we have to do good
on the earth by spineless peace fulness, if we are
not able, if we are not willing, to make our words
count by means of our deeds. Germany stands
as the antithesis of democracy. She exults in her
belief that in England democracy has broken
down. She exults in the fact that in America
democracy has shown itself so utterly futile that
it has not even dared to speak about wrongdoing
committed against others, and has not dared to
do more than speak, without acting, when the
wrong was done against itself. She openly ex-
ults in and counts upon the fact that the profes-
sional German-Americans are disloyal to the
United States. She uses the politicians who are
afraid of the German-American vote.

Every professional pacifist in America, every
representative of commercialized greed, every
apostle of timidity, every sinister creature who
betrays his country by pandering to the anti-
American feeling which masquerades under
some species of hyphenated Americanism — all
these men and women and their representatives
in public life are at this moment working against
democracy. If the democratic ideal fails, if de-
mocracy goes down, they will be primarily to

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blame. For democracy will assuredly go down
if it once be shown that it is incompatible with
national security. The law of self-preservation
is the primary law for nations as for individu-
als. If a nation cannot protect itself under a
democratic form of government, then it will
either die or evolve a new form of government.

I believe that our people will realize these
facts. I believe that our people will make democ-
racy successful. They can only do so if they
show by their actions that they understand the
responsibilities that go with democracy. The
first and the greatest of these responsibilities is
the responsibility of national self-defence. We
must be prepared to defend a country governed
in accordance with the democratic ideal or else
we are guilty of treason to that ideal. To de-
fend the country it is necessary to organize the
country in peace, or it cannot be organized in
war. A riot of unrestricted individualism in
time of peace means impotence for sustained and
universal national effort toward a common end
in war time. Neither businessman nor wage-
worker should be permitted to do anything detri-
mental to the people as a whole; and if they act
honestly and efficiently they should in all ways
be encouraged. There should be social cohesion.
We must devise methods by which under our
democratic government we shall secure the so-

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cialization of industry which autocratic Germany
has secured, so that business may be encouraged
and yet controlled in the general interest, and the
wage-workers guaranteed full justice and their
full share of the reward of industry, and yet re-
quired to show the corresponding efficiency and
public spirit that justify their right to an in-
creased reward. But the vital fact to remember
is that ultimately it will prove worse than use-
less to have our people prosper unless they are
able to defend this prosperity ; to fight for it.

Let us, then, make up our minds to prepare;
and make up our minds just what we want to
prepare to do. We have the Panama Canal.
Many of our Congressmen have in the past con-
sistently opposed the upbuilding of the navy and
the fortification of the Panama Canal. These
men may mean well, but their action has repre-
sented an unworthy abandonment of national
duty; and they have shown themselves to be the
most dangerous enemies of this republic, men
unfit to be trusted in public life in any position
whatsoever. If the American people wish to
support such public servants, then let them in-
stantly abandon the Canal, giving it back to Pan-
ama or turning it over to Japan or Germany
or England or any other people whose ruling class
is composed of men and not of eunuchs. Let
them also abandon the Monroe Doctrine; let

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them abandon all pretense of protecting life and
property in Mexico. In short, let us take the po-
sition of the China of the Occident and await
with helpless weakness the day when our terri-
tory will be divided among more competent peo-
ples.

But if we intend to play our part as a great
nation and to be prepared to defend our own in-
terests and to do good to others, let us decide
what we want to do and then make ready to do it.
South of the Equator, that is, south of the line of
approaches on each side to the Panama Canal,
we need no longer bother about the Monroe Doc-
trine. Brazil, Chile, the Argentine, are capable
themselves of handling the Monroe Doctrine for
all South America, excepting the extreme north-
ern part. Consider the case of Argentina, for
instance. In Argentina, as in Switzerland, they
have universal military service. This has been
of enormous use to them industrially and socially.
It has also given them at present an army of
close to half a million men, although they have
not one-tenth the population of the United States.
Argentina is far more fitted to defend its own
territory from a sudden attack by a powerful
enemy than is the United States. We would do
well to sit at her feet and learn the lesson she can
thus teach us.

Therefore we need bother with the Monroe
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Doctrine only so far as the approaches to the
Panama Canal are concerned, that is, so far as
concerns the territories between our southern
border and, roughly speaking, the Equator. We
do not have to bother about the Monroe Doctrine
and Canada, for during the past year Canada
has shown herself infinitely more efficient than
we are.

This Administration was elected on the spe-
cific promise to give freedom to the Philippines.
The United States must keep its promises. No
greater service has been rendered by any people
to another during the past hundred years than
we have rendered to the Philippines — and than
we have rendered to Cuba also. In February,
1909, when the battle-fleet returned from its voy-
age around the world, the United States was in
point of military, that is, primarily naval, effi-
ciency in such shape that there was no people
that would have ventured to attempt to wrong
us ; and under such circumstances we could afford
to keep the Philippines and to continue the work
that we were doing. But since then we have rela-
tively to other powers sunk incalculably from a
military standpoint; we are infinitely less fitted
than we were to defend ourselves. Above all, we
have promised the Filipinos independence in
terms which were inevitably understood to be in-

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UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE SAM

dependence in the immediate future ; and we have
begun to govern them weakly.

Such indecision in international conduct shows
that this people ought not to undertake the gov-
ernment of a distant dependency, and this both
from military reasons and because of the need of
keeping promises that have been made. Let us,
then, as speedily as possible, leave the Philip-
pines; and as the Philippines desire us to leave
we would be quit of all moral obligations for
them, and would under no circumstances be
obliged to defend them from other nations.

There remain Alaska, Hawaii, our own coasts,
and the Panama Canal and its approaches, as the
military problem with which we should grapple;
and with this problem we should grapple in the
manner already set forth in this book.

A democracy should not be willing to hire
somebody else to do its fighting. The man who
claims the right to vote should be a man able and
willing to fight at need for the country which
gives him the vote. I believe in democracy in
time of peace ; and I believe in it in time of war.
I believe in universal service. Universal service
represents the true democratic ideal. No man,
rich or poor, should be allowed to shirk it. In
time of war every citizen of the Republic should
be held absolutely to serve the Republic whenever
the Republic needs him or her. The pacifist and

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the hyphenated American should be sternly re-
quired to fight and made to serve in the army and
to share the work and danger of their braver and
more patriotic countrymen; and any dereliction
of duty on their part should be punished with the
sharpest rigor. The man who will not fit him-
self to fight for his country has no right to a
vote in shaping that country's policy. As for the
woman who approves the song, "I Did Not Raise
My Boy To Be a Soldier," her place is in China
— or by preference in a harem — and not in the
United States. But she is all right if she will
change the song into "I Did Not Raise My
Boy To Be the Only Soldier." Every woman
who has not raised her boy to be a soldier at need
has in unwomanly fashion striven to put a dou-
ble burden on some other boy whose mother had
a patriotic soul. The much-praised "volunteer"
system means nothing but encouraging brave
men to do double duty and incur double risk in
order that cowards and shirks and mere money-
getters may sit at home in a safety bought by
the lives of better men.

The United States has — and deserves to have
— only one friend in the world. This is the
United States. We have ourselves treated the
Hague Conventions as scraps of paper; and we
cannot expect any one else to show the respect
for such treaties which we have lacked. Our

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UNCLE SAM'S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE SAM

safety and therefore the safety of democratic in-
stitutions rests on our own strength and only on
our own strength. If we are a true democracy,
if we really believe in government of the people
by the people and for the people, if we believe in
social and industrial justice to be achieved
through the people, and therefore in the right
of the people to demand the service of all the
people, let us make the Army fundamentally an
army of the whole people.

This will be carrying out the democratic ideal.
The policy advocated for Britain by Lord Rob-
erts was really the necessary complement to the
policy advocated for Britain by Lloyd-George.
In a democracy service should be required of
every man, in peace and in war ; we should guar-
antee to every man his rights, and require from
each man the full performance of his duties. It
may well be that in the end we shall find it worth
while to insist that all our young men, at their
entrance to manhood, perform a year's industrial
service — in the harvest fields, in city sanitation,
on the roads, anywhere. Such service would be
equally beneficial to the son of the millionaire
and to the boy who grows up in the crowded
quarters of our great cities or out on lonely farms
in the back country.

This is for the future. As for the present,
it is certain that a half year's military service

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would be a priceless boon to these young men
themselves, as well as to the nation. It would
tend to social cohesion. We would gain a genu-
ine citizens' army, and we would gain a far
higher type of citizenship. Our young men, at
the outset of their lives, would be trained — not
merely to shoot and to drill, which are only small
parts of military training — but to habits of bod-
ily endurance and moral self-mastery, to com-
mand and to obey, to act on their own initiative
and to understand and promptly execute orders,
to respect themselves and to respect others, and
to understand that they are to serve their coun-
try with deeds and not words only. Under such
conditions the young American would enter man-
hood accustomed to take pride in that disciplined
spirit of orderly self-reliance combined with abil-
ity to work with others, which is the most essen-
tial element in the success of a great, free, mod-
ern democracy.

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THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER AND OF PLAYING
CHILDREN HAS BEEN STILLED IN MEXICO

AN astonishing proof of the readiness of
many persons to pay heed exclusively to
words and not at all to deeds is supplied by the
statement of the defenders of this Administration
that President Wilson has "kept us out of war
with Mexico" and has "avoided interference in
Mexico." These are the words. The deeds have
been: first, an unbroken course of more or less
furtive meddling in the internal affairs of Mex-
ico carried to a pitch which imposes on this na-
tion a grave responsibility for the wrong-doing
of the victorious factions ; and, second, the plung-
ing of this country into what was really a futile
and inglorious little war with Mexico, a war en-
tered into witn no adequate object, and aban-
doned without the achievement of any object
whatever, adequate or inadequate.

To say that we did not go to war with Mexico
is a mere play upon words. A quarter of the
wars of history have been entered into and car-
ried through without any preliminary declaration

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of war and often without any declaration of war
at all. The seizure of the leading seaport city
of another country, the engagement and defeat
of the troops of that country, and the retention
of the territory thus occupied for a number of
months, constitute war ; and denial that it is war
can only serve to amuse the type of intellect
which would assert that Germany has not been
at war with Belgium because Germany did not
originally declare war on Belgium. President
Wilson's war only resulted in the sacrifice of a
score of American lives and a hundred or two
of the lives of Mexicans ; it was entirely purpose-
less, has served no good object, has achieved
nothing and has been abandoned by Mr. Wilson
without obtaining the object because of which
it was nominally entered into; it can therefore
rightly be stigmatized as a peculiarly unwise, ig-
noble and inefficient war; but it was war never-
theless.

This has been bad enough. But the general
course of the Administration toward Mexico has
been worse and even more productive of wide and
far-reaching harm. Here again, word-splitters
may, if they desire, endeavor to show that the
President did not "intervene" in Mexico; but if
so they would be obliged to make a fine discrimi-
nation between intervention and officious and
mischievous intermeddling. Whether it is said

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that President Wilson "intervened" in Mexican
affairs, or that he merely intermeddled, so as to
produce much evil and no good and to make
us responsible for the actions of a peculiarly
lawless, ignorant and blood-thirsty faction,
is of small importance. The distinction is one
merely of words. The simple fact is that thanks
to President Wilson's action — and at times his
inaction has been the most effective and vicious
form of action — this country has become par-
tially (and guiltily) responsible for some of the
worst acts ever committed even in the civil wars
of Mexico.

When Mr. Wilson became President of the
United States, Huerta was President of Mexico
On any theory of non-interference with the af-
fairs of our neighbors, on any theory of avoid-
ing war and of refusing to take sides with or
become responsible for the deeds of blood-stained
contending factions, it was the clear duty of Mr
Wilson to accept Mr. Huerta as being President
of Mexico. Unless Mr. Wilson was prepared ac-
tively to interfere in Mexico and to establish
some sort of protectorate over it, he had no more
business to pass judgment upon the methods of
Mr. Huerta's selection (which had occurred prior
to Mr. Wilson's advent to power) than Mexico
would have had to refuse to recognize Mr, Hayes
as President on the ground that it was not satis-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

fied with his economic policy and moreover sym-
pathized with Mr. Tilden's side of the contro-
versy. And if Mr. Wilson made up his mind to
interfere in Mexico — for of course the most
trenchant type of interference was refusal to rec-
ognize the Mexican President — he should have
notified Foreign Powers of his proposed action
in order to prevent so far as possible Huerta's
recognition by them. President Wilson inter-
fered in such feeble fashion as to accomplish the
maximum of evil to us and to other foreigners
and the Mexicans, and the minimum of good to
anybody. He hit ; but he hit softly. Now, no one
should ever hit if it can be avoided; but never
should any one "hit soft."

When Mr. Wilson refused to recognize
Huerta, he committed a definite act of interfer-
ence of the most pronounced type. At the same
time he and Mr. Bryan looked on with folded
arms and without a protest of any kind while
American citizens were murdered or robbed or
shamefully maltreated in all parts of Mexico by
the different sets of banditti who masqueraded
as soldiers of the different factions. He main-
tained for a long time a friendly intercourse with
one chief of political adventurers through irregu-
larly appointed diplomatic agents, and he adopted
an openly offensive attitude toward the chief of
another set, although he was then the de facto

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MEXICO

head of whatever government Mexico had. Then
he turned against this once-favored bandit in
the interest of a third bandit. By his action in
permitting the transmission of arms over the bor-
der President Wilson not only actively aided the
insurrection but undoubtedly furnished it with
the means essential to its triumph, while at the
same time his active interference prevented
Huerta from organizing an effective resistance.
His defenders allege that he could not properly
have forbidden the transmission of arms to the
revolutionaries across the border. The answer is
that he did forbid it at intervals. He thereby
showed that he was taking an active interest in
the arming of the revolutionaries, that he permit-
ted it when he chose to do so and stopped it in-
termittently whenever he thought it best to stop
it, and was therefore entirely responsible for it.
The nominal rights which the contending fac-
tions championed, and the actual and hideous
wrongs done by all of them, were not our affair
save in so far as Americans and other foreigners
were maltreated. We may individually sympa-
thize, as, for instance, I personally do, with the
general purpose of the program for division of
the lands among the Mexican cultivators, an-
nounced by Carranza, Villa and other revolution-
ary leaders; but this no more justified interfer-
ence on our part than belief in the wisdom of

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the single tax for the United States by some for-
eign ruler would warrant his interference in the
internal affairs of the United States. Moreover
nothing in the career of Carranza and Villa or
in the conduct of the Mexican people at present
justifies us in any belief that this program will in
any real sense be put into effect.

However, the interference took place. By the
course President Wilson pursued toward Huerta
and by the course he pursued toward Villa and
Carranza, he actively interfered in the internal
affairs of Mexico. He actively sided with the
faction which ultimately triumphed — and which
immediately split into other factions which are
now no less actively engaged in fighting one an-
other. Personally, I do not think that the Ad-
ministration should have interfered in this man-
ner. But one thing is certain. When the Admin-
istration did interfere, it was bound to accept the
responsibility for its acts. It could not give any
aid to the revolutionaries without accepting a
corresponding share of responsibility for their
deeds and misdeeds. It could not aid them be-
cause of their attitude on the land question with-
out also assuming a corresponding share of re-
sponsibility for their attitude toward religion and
toward the professors of religion. The United
States would have had no responsibility whatever
for what was done to the Church by any faction

236

MEXICO

which did not owe its triumph to action by the
United States. But when the United States
takes part in civil war in Mexico, as Messrs.
Wilson and Bryan forced our Government to
take part, this country has thereby made itself
responsible for the frightful wrong-doing, for the
terrible outrages committed by the victorious
revolutionists on hundreds of the religious people
of both sexes.

To avoid the chance of anything but willful
misrepresentation, let me emphasize my position.
I hold that it was not our affair to interfere one
way or the other in the purely internal affairs
of Mexico, so far as they affected only Mexican
citizens ; because if the time came when such in-
terference was absolutely required it could only
be justified if it were thorough-going and effec-
tive. Moreover, I hold that it was our clear duty
to have interfered promptly and effectively on
behalf of American citizens who were wronged,
instead of behaving as President Wilson and Sec-
retary Bryan actually did behave. To our dis-
grace as a nation, they forced American citizens
to claim and accept from British and German
officials and officers the protection which our own
government failed to give. When we did inter-
fere in Mexican internal affairs to aid one fac-
tion, we thereby made ourselves responsible for
the deeds of that faction, and we have no right to

237

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

try to shirk that responsibility. Messrs. Wilson
and Bryan declined to interfere to protect
the rights of Americans or of other foreigners
in Mexico. But they interfered as between
the Mexicans themselves in the interest of one
faction and with the result of placing that faction
in power. They therefore bound themselves
to accept responsibility for the deeds and mis-
deeds of that faction, and of the further factions
into which it then split, in so far as Mr. Wilson
sided with one of these as against the other.

Not long ago President Wilson, in a speech at
Swarthmore, declared that "Nowhere in this
hemisphere can any government endure which is
stained by blood," and at Mobile that "we will
never condone iniquity because it is most con-
venient to do so." At the very time he uttered
those lofty words, the leaders and lieutenants of
the faction which he was actively supporting
were shooting their prisoners in cold blood by
scores after each engagement, were tortur-
ing men reputed to be rich, were driving
hundreds of peaceful people from their
homes, were looting and defiling churches and
treating ecclesiastics and religious women with
every species of abominable infamy, from mur-
der and rape down. In other words, at the very
time that the President was stating that "no-
where on this hemisphere can any government

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MEXICO

endure which is stained by blood," he was ac-
tively engaged in helping install in power a gov-
ernment which was not only stained by blood
but stained by much worse than blood. At the
very time that he was announcing that he would
"never condone iniquity because it was conven-
ient to do so," he was not merely condoning but
openly assisting iniquity and installing in
power a set of men whose actions were those of
ferocious barbarians.

Remember that I am not engaged in defending
the factional opponents of these victorious
wrong-doers. There is not evidence sufficient to
decide which of the many factions behaved worst.
But there is ample material to decide that they
all behaved atrociously. Apparently the Admin-
istration took the ground that inasmuch as Mr.
Huerta and his followers were bad men, it was
our duty to condone the evil committed by their
opponents. Father R. H. Tierney, of New York
City, an entirely responsible man, informs me
that when (in company with two other gentlemen
whose names he gives me) he called upon Mr.
Bryan to bring to his attention the abominable
outrages committed on certain nuns by the fol-
lowers of Carranza and Villa, Mr. Bryan in-
formed Father Tierney that he had information
that "the followers of Huerta had committed sim-
ilar outrages on two American women from

239

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Iowa!" (This sentence has been read to Father
Tierney, who states that it describes the inter-
view with exactness. The original of the affida-
vits herein quoted are in the possession of Father
Tierney, 59 East Eighty-third street, New York
City, and Father Kelly, and will be shown by
them to any reputable person.) Apparently Mr.
Bryan believed this disposed of the situation and
relieved the revolutionaries of blame.

Surely, it ought not to be necessary to say that
if the facts as thus stated to and by Mr. Bryan
were true (and if there was any doubt immediate
investigation as to their truth by the government
was demanded), then the way to get justice was
not by treating one infamy as wiping out the
other but by exacting the sternest retribution for
both and effectively providing against the repe-
tition of either. Even assuming for the moment
that the attitude of the Administration had not so
committed the government that it was its duty to
interfere on behalf of the nuns thus outraged,
Mr. Bryan's statement to Father Tierney shows
almost incredible callousness on his part to the
most dreadful type of suffering, to acts far worse
than the mere murder of any man. It seems lit-
erally impossible that any representative of the
American government in high office could fail to
be stirred to his depths by such wrong, or could
have failed to insist on the immediate and con-

240

MEXICO

dign punishment of the wrong-doers and on the
amplest safeguarding against all possible repe-
tition of the wrong. Apparently the only way
in which it occurred to Mr. Bryan to take any
action against the faction whose adherents had
perpetrated these hideous wrongs on the two
American women was by encouraging another
faction which he must have known in advance
and certainly did know after the event would
commit and had committed wrongs equally
hideous.

I have before me a copy of El Heraldo de
Toluca of September I3th, 1914. It contains a
manifesto on behalf of the victorious revolution-
aries of the party of Messrs. Carranza and Villa,
dealing with the "conditions under which the Ro-
man Worship will have to be practiced." (I
translate into English.) Among the preambles
are the following: I, that the ministers of the
Catholic Worship circulate doctrines which are
not in accordance with the principles of the true
Christ; 2, that on account of the learning that
these ministers have acquired they cannot in the
minds of those who possess equal or greater
learning (but who differ from them in opinion)
pass as sincere believers in the doctrines they
preach and that they thereby exploit the ignor-
ance of the ignorant masses ; 3, that inasmuch as
this conduct harms people by frightening them

24.1

with the fear of eternal punishment and thereby
tends to make them subservient to the priesthood
and that inasmuch as all kinds of people from
workmen to capitalists give too much money to
the churches and because of various other similar
facts, the decree in question is promulgated.

This decree includes the forbidding "of any
sermons which will encourage fanaticism;" the
proscribing of any fasts or similar practices ; the
prohibition of any money being paid for chris-
tenings, marriages or other matters; the prohi-
bition of the soliciting of contributions (that is,
the passing of the plate) ; the prohibition of cele-
bration of masses for the dead or the celebration
of more than two masses a week ; the prohibition
of confession and with this object in view the
closing of the churches excepting once a week
at the hour of the masses; and, finally, the pro-
hibition of more than one priest living in Toluca
and the requirement that he, when he walks in
the streets, shall be dressed absolutely as a ci-
vilian without anything in his costume revealing
the fact that he is a minister. In order to be per-
mitted to exercise the functions thus limited, the
priest is required to affix his signature of accept-
ance to the foregoing regulations.

Now, in various South American countries
there have been bitter contests between the Cler-
icals and the anti-Clericals and again and again

242

MEXICO

the extremists of each side have taken positions
which in the eyes of sensible Americans of all
religious creeds are intolerable. There are in
our own country individuals who sincerely believe
that the Masons or the Knights of Columbus, or
the members of the Junior Order of American
Mechanics, or the Catholic Church or the Metho-
dist Church or the Ethical Culture Society, rep-
resent what is all wrong. There are sincere men
in the United States who by argument desire to
convince their fellows belonging to any one of the
bodies above mentioned (and to any one of many
others) that they are mistaken, either when they
go to church or when they do not go to church,
when they "preach sermons of a fanatical type"
or inveigh against "sermons of a fanatical type,"
when they put money in the plate to help support
a church or when they refuse to support a church,
when they join secret societies or sit on the
mourners' bench or practise confession. Accord-
ing to our ideas, all men have an absolute right
to favor or oppose any of these practices. But,
according to our ideas, no men have any right to
endeavor to make the government either favor
or oppose them. According to our ideas, we
should emphatically disapprove of any action in
any Spanish- American country which is designed
to oppress either Catholics or Protestants, either
Masons or anti-Masons, either Liberals or Cler-

243

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

icals, or to interfere with religious liberty,
whether by intolerance exercised for or against
any religious creed, or by people who do or do
not believe in any religious creed.

I hold that these should be our sympathies.
But I emphatically hold that it is not the duty
of this government to try to make other countries
act in accordance with these sympathies, and,
above all, not the duty of the government to help
some other government which acts against these
great principles with which we sympathize.
Messrs. Wilson and Bryan by their actions have
assumed a certain undoubted responsibility for
the behavior of the victorious faction in Mexico
which has just taken the kind of stand indicated
in the proclamation above quoted; a stand, of
course, hostile to every principle of real religious
liberty, a stand which if applied logically would
mean that no minister of any church could in
public wear a high-cut waistcoat or perhaps even
a black frock-coat, and which would put a stop
even to such common-place actions as the passing
of the plate in any church to encourage home
missions.

But this attitude is only one of the offences
committed. Catholic schools almost everywhere
in Mexico have been closed, institutions of learn-
ing sacked and libraries and astronomical and
other machinery destroyed, the priests and nuns

244

MEXICO

expelled by hundreds and some of the priests
killed and some of the nuns outraged. Arch-
bishop Blenk of New Orleans, Father Tierney,
editor of America, Father Kelly, president of
the Catholic Church Extension Society, Mr. Pe-
try, one of the directors of the Catholic Church
Extension Society, and a Mexican bishop whose
name I do not give because it might involve him
in trouble, came to see me at my house; and in
Chicago I saw other priests and refugees from
Mexico, both priests, nuns and lay brothers. The
statements and affidavits, submitted to me in the
original and copies of which I have before me
as I write, set forth conditions which are liter-
ally appalling and for which, be it remembered,
the actions of Messrs. Wilson and Bryan have
made this country partly responsible.

For example, Archbishop Blenk submitted to
me an affidavit by the prioress of the Bare-footed
Carmelite Nuns of the Convent of Queretaro.
This sets forth from the personal knowledge of
the prioress how the churches have been pro-
faned by soldiers entering them on horseback,
breaking statues, trampling on relics and scatter-
ing on the floor the Sacred Hosts and even throw-
ing them into the horses' feed; how in some
churches the revolutionaries have offered mock
masses and have in other ways, some of them too
repulsive and loathsome to mention, behaved pre-
245

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

cisely as the Red Terrorists of the French Revo-
lution behaved in the churches of Paris ; how, for
example, St. Anthony's Church at Aguascali-
entes has been made into a legislative hall and
the Church of St. Joseph at Queretaro and the
great convent of the Carmelites and the lyceum
of the Christian Brothers all have been confisca-
ted; how the church property has been seques-
tered and the archives burned and the men and
women in the cloistered communities expelled
without being allowed to take even an extra suit
of clothes or a book of prayer.

The prioress states that she has herself seen
in Mexico City nuns who have been "victims of
the passions of the revolutionary soldiers," and
some whom she found in their own homes, others
in hospitals and in maternity houses, who in con-
sequence are about to be delivered of children.
She deposes: "I have seen soldiers dressed up
in chasubles, stoles, maniples and cinctures, with
copes and altar linen, and their women dressed up
in albs, surplices, and corporals used as handker-
chiefs." She has seen the sacred vessels pro-
faned in a thousand ways. She describes meet-
ing seven nuns who had been outraged, whom she
directed to a maternity house, and who had aban-
doned themselves to utter despair, saying "that
they were already damned and abandoned by
God and they cursed the hour of their religious

246

MEXICO

profession." She describes how she escaped
from Quaretaro with nuns who had been obliged
to hide in private houses in order to escape being
taken to the barracks by the soldiers. She de-
scribes how she had daily to beg the food neces-
sary to sustain the twenty-four sisters with
whom she escaped.

In Chicago I saw a French priest, Father Dom-
inic Fournier, of the Congregation of the Pas-
sion, who had just escaped from Mexico with two
young Spanish students for the priesthood. He
had escaped from the City of Toluca with noth-
ing whatever, not even a Rosary. He and the
two novices described to me their experience in
Toluca. The churches and religious houses were
sacked and confiscated and the soldiers and their
women indulged in orgies before and around the
altars. One of the lay brothers named Mariano
Gonzales tried to save some of the things from
the church. The revolutionists seized him and
accused him of robbing, the state. He was shot
by a file of soldiers on August 22nd, 1914, and his
dead body was left all day long in the court in
which Father Fournier and the other priests and
the two novices who spoke to me and their asso-
ciates were confined. They were kept in prison
sixteen days and then allowed to go with nothing
but what they .had on.

I have seen the original of and have in my pos-
247

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

session a translation of a letter written on Octo-
ber 24th by a young girl of Toluca to her pastor
who had been exiled. She described how the
bishop had been heavily fined and exiled. She
describes how the clubs of boys and girls for
whom she had been working had been broken up,
but how some of the boys to whom they used to
give breakfast on Sunday mornings still occa-
sionally come to see them; and she asks advice
how to keep these clubs of the poor together. But
the dreadful and pathetic part of the letter is con-
tained in the following sentence: "Now I will
ask you a question. Suppose some one falls into
the power of the Zapatistas. Would it be better
for her to take her own life rather than allow
them to do their will and what they are accus-
tomed to do? As I never thought such a thing
could happen, I did not ask you before about it,
but now I see it is quite possible. If we had not
our good God in whom we trust, I think we would
give way to despair."

In other words, this girl who had been engaged
in charitable work in connection with the church
asks her pastor whether she is permitted to com-
mit suicide in order to avoid the outrages to
which so many hundreds of Mexican women, so
many scores of nuns, have been exposed in the
last few months. I cannot imagine any man of
whatever creed — or of no creed — reading this let-

248

MEXICO

ter without his blood tingling with horror and
anger; and we Americans should bear in mind
the fact that the actions of President Wilson and
Secretary Bryan in supporting the Villistas (un-
til President Wilson suddenly swapped bandits
and supported the Carranzistas) have made us
partly responsible for such outrages.

I have been given and shown letters from refu-
gees in Galveston, in Corpus Christi, in San An-
tonio and Havana. These refugees include seven
archbishops, six bishops, some hundreds of
priests, and at least three hundred nuns. Most
of these bishops and priests had been put in jail
or in the penitentiary or otherwise confined and
maltreated. Two-thirds of the institutions of
higher learning in Mexico have been confiscated
and more or less completely destroyed and a large
part of the ordinary educational institutions have
been treated in similar fashion.

Many of the affidavits before me recite tortures
so dreadful that I am unwilling to put them in
print. It would be tedious to recite all the facts
set forth in these affidavits. For instance, there
is one, by Daniel R. Loweree, a priest of the dio-
cese of Guadalajara, the son of an American fa-
ther, and librarian of the Seminary and pro-
fessor of chemistry. He describes what took
place in Guadalajara. On July 2ist, about one
hundred priests from the city and country round

249

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

about were put in the jail, while the cathedral
was used as a barracks. In the affidavit of Canon
Jose Maria Vela, of the Cathedral of Zacatecas,
he sets forth how the constitutionalists shot a
priest named Velarde, how twenty-three priests
were gathered together and under the orders of
General Villa required to produce one million
pesos within twenty-four hours, under penalty
of being shot. A committee of the priests went
out through the city begging from house to house
and accepting even pennies from the children. A
girl was forcibly violated by one of the soldiers
in the room adjoining that in which these priests
were kept. Finally, the citizens raised a couple
of hundred thousand pesos and the priests were
released and allowed to flee without any of their
belongings. Seventeen of the fleeing priests are
now in El Paso and their names are given in the
document and those of some of them signed to an
accompanying document.

In an affidavit by the Reverend Michael Ku-
bicza, of the Society of Jesus, whose father was
a Hungarian physician, he describes how he was
tortured in order to make him give up money. A
soldier nicknamed Baca, in the presence of
Colonel Fierro, put a horsehair rope around his
neck and choked him until he became unconscious.
When he came to, Baca fired a revolver near
his head and commanded him to give up and tell

250

MEXICO

him where the Jesuit treasures were buried. On
answering that there were none, he was again
choked until he was unconscious, and this was
repeated a third time. The affidavit describes at
length some of the sufferings of the priests in
fleeing.

All kinds of other affidavits have been sub-
mitted to me, dealing with torture and murder,
as, for example, the killing of Father Alba, the
parish priest of Cabra, the killing of the parish
priest and vicar at Tula, the killing of the chap-
lain and rector and vice-president of the Chris-
tian Brothers' College, etc., etc.

The one feature in the events narrated to me
and set forth in the affidavits to me which can
give any American the least satisfaction is the
statement of the kindness with which the unfor-
tunate refugees had been treated in Vera Cruz
by the officers and men of the Army and Navy,
particular mention being made of General
Funston.

What I have above stated is but a small part
of the immense mass of facts available to the
President (and Mr. Bryan) had they cared to
examine them. They relate to outrages on Cath-
olics. This is merely because the enormous ma-
jority of the religious people of Mexico are Cath-
olics. I should set them forth just as minutely
if they had been inflicted by Catholics on Free-

251

thinkers or Protestants or Masons — I am myself
both a Protestant and a Mason and I claim and
exercise the right of full liberty of thought.
Even if we had no responsibility for them, I
nevertheless fail to see how any American could
read the account of them without a feeling of
burning indignation. As things actually are,
shame must be mingled with our indignation.
The action of the President (and Mr. Bryan) has
been such as to make this country partly respon-
sible for the frightful wrongs that have been
committed on the Mexicans themselves. For the
wrongs committed on Americans, and neither
prevented nor redressed, our Government is not
merely partly, but wholly, responsible.

A year ago I was shown a letter from Naco,
Arizona, written by a railway engineer on
January 10, 1915. He mentions that five
persons had been killed and forty-seven wounded
on the American side of the boundary line
by stray bullets shot by the Mexicans, and
adds: "My wife was shot in the neck in our
house, six hundred yards from the line, when
she was reading. I would rather a thousand
times be with Emperor Bill than an American
citizen under such conditions." I have just been
visited by a Boer gentleman, who has been resi-
dent in Mexico for a dozen years ; after the Boer
War he was exiled from Cape Colony and his

252

MEXICO

property confiscated; but in Mexico he does not
claim to be an American ; he clings eagerly to his
British citizenship; for England, like Germany
and France, does try to protect her citizens,
whereas bitter experience has taught the average
American citizen in Mexico that in his case, rob-
bery and murder will bring no protest from his
home government.

At this moment the Administration is protest-
ing about the seizure of cotton, copper and rub-
ber in ships owned by American merchants and
destined for one of the belligerent powers in
Europe. It is standing strongly for the property
right of the man who wishes to sell his goods to
foreigners engaged in war. It at one time urged
passage of a law to let it purchase the ships of
one of the powers engaged in war, which ships
had been interned in our waters; a purchase
which would have been to the pecuniary advan-
tage of certain banking and business firms, and
to the pecuniary advantage of the power in ques-
tion, but which might very well have embroiled
us with the nations now at war with this power ;
so that the proposed law would have been very
objectionable.

Yet while thus endeavoring to serve, some-
times properly and sometimes improperly, the in-
terests of the business men which have been hurt
by this war, the Administration pays not the

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

smallest attention to the cases of the correspond-
ing business men — certainly no less deserving —
who have suffered so -terribly in Mexico; and
it pays no attention whatever to the cases of
American citizens of humble position and small
means, men, women and children, who have lost
life or limb, or all their few worldly goods, dur-
ing the past two years on the Mexican border and
within Mexico itself.

The El Paso Morning Times of December 26,
1914, a Democratic paper supporting President
Wilson, stated that in the firing by Mexican sol-
diers across the border "fully fifty persons, in-
cluding American soldiers," were wounded. A
former district-attorney of New Mexico writes
me that the exact number was fifty-seven, some
of whom were killed, and that the men shot in-
cluded American soldiers walking their beats as
sentries. This information was obtained from
the coroner at Naco. From the same source I
am informed that before President Wilson came
into power, eighteen American citizens were
killed and wounded in like manner at El Paso.

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the
whole Naco affair is that at that point there is
an open port of entry. The arms and ammuni-
tion used to kill American women and children,
and American soldiers, were openly purchased in
the United States and openly delivered through

254

MEXICO

a port of entry to the warring factions in Mex-
ico. An American army officer whose name, of
course, I cannot give, who has been serving along
the Mexican border, informs me that, among the
enlisted men, man after man, when his enlist-
ment ran out, refused to re-enlist because the
orders of the Administration were that when
fired at, on American soil, by Mexicans, he was
not to return the fire. I speak of what I know
personally when I say that this action by the Ad-
ministration has not only deeply damaged us in
the eyes of the Mexican people, but is a frightful
source of demoralization among the American
troops. It is literally incomprehensible to me
that any American who knows the truth can be
willing to tolerate such a condition of affairs.

Surely our people should ponder these facts.
Here are American private citizens, men, women
and children, and American soldiers, all on
American soil, scores of whom have been killed
or wounded by bullets shot across the line. Some
of the killing has been done through sheer care-
lessness and contemptuous indifference for our
rights;. some has been done maliciously and of
purpose; and yet President Wilson's Adminis-
tration has failed to take any action. The cul-
mination came in the month of January of the
present year 1916, when sixteen Americans were
taken from a train in the state of Chihuahua and

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murdered premeditatedly and in cold blood.
Had Mr. Wilson had in him one faint spark of
the courage of Andrew Jackson no Mexican
would have dared even think of such action.
The murder of these Americans was the direct
result of President Wilson's recognition of Car-
ranza's government for otherwise they would not
have been in Mexico, and their murderers felt
they could act with impunity because for three
years President Wilson had shown again and
again that American citizens could be murdered,
and the American flag outraged, without hin-
drance from him. The record of the preceding
Administration as regards Mexico was not a
pleasant object of contemplation for Americans
brought up to honor the flag; but the present
Administration has made Americans in or near
Mexico feel that they have no flag to honor.

Be it remembered also that there was not the
slightest difficulty in stopping the particular kind
of flagrant outrage that occurred along the bor-
der. There were difficulties connected with other
features of possible policy in Mexico, but there
never has been the slightest difficulty as regards
this particular matter. At any moment since,
some five years ago, the revolution began, this
type of outrage could have been stopped within
twenty- four hours. It can be stopped over night.
All that is necessary is to notify the Mexican au-

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thorities that if there is any repetition of such
action at any point, the American troops will
promptly be sent over to the locality where the
outrage occurs and will drive all the contestants
to beyond extreme rifle range of the border, and
will exact immediate punishment for any man or
party violating the measures which the American
officer in charge deems it necessary to take to
protect our peaceable citizens within our own
borders. It is literally incomprehensible that or-
ders such as this should not have been issued
years ago.

I speak of the cases of this type because they
are so flagrant; because there can be no discus-
sion about them and no defence of them which
can puzzle any man of reasonable intelligence.
But the wrongs thus committed constitute only
the tiniest fraction of the innumerable wrongs
committed upon Americans and upon foreigners
of every nationality in the course of the five
years of anarchy during which Mexico has been
torn to pieces by various groups of banditti. The
worst of these banditti have been more or less
actively helped by the present Administration,
and during the entire five years, but notably dur-
ing the last three years, they have all of them
been permitted to prey with impunity upon the
persons and the property of Americans and of
other foreigners in Mexico.

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The Administration should be condemned for
its policy in Mexico ; but let us be frank with our-
selves, we Americans, and say the condemnation
should be visited upon us as a nation, for we have
had the amplest knowledge of all that has hap-
pened. It has been put before us in detail offi-
cially. Yet we have declined to make our indig-
nation felt by President Wilson, and by Mr.
Bryan (when Mr. Bryan was in office). Messrs.
Wilson and Bryan not merely sat supine, but
actually encouraged the Mexican leaders who
were responsible for the murder of American
men and the outraging of American women.
Since Mr. Bryan left office, President Wilson has
continued the policy unchanged, and his is the
sole responsibility for the innumerable murders
and outrages that have since occurred; murders
and outrages committed by Carranzistas and
Villistas alike.

I wish that every American citizen would read
the speech of Senator Albert B. Fall, of New
Mexico, delivered in the Senate of the United
States on March 9, 1914. Not only have Senator
Fall's statements been left unanswered, but no
adequate attempt has even been made to answer
them. One or two Democratic Senators have
striven to answer similar statements by the as-
sertion that things as bad were permitted under
the Administration of President Taft. But Sen-

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ator Fall's speech was open to no such rejoinder,
for he impartially cited outrages committed prior
to the advent and subsequent to the advent of the
present Administration to power.

The Senate partially performed its duty. On
April 20, 1913, it sent to the President a formally
worded request for information as to the number
of Americans killed in Mexico, the number driven
out of that country and as to what steps had been
taken to obtain justice. No answer whatever
was made to this request, and it was repeated in
the following July. Then the President an-
swered, declining to give the information on the
ground that it was not compatible with the pub-
lic interest. If the President had then had a well-
thought-out policy which he intended forthwith
to apply for remedying the conditions of affairs,
such an answer might have been proper. But, as
a matter of fact, events have shown that he had
no policy whatever, save in so far as vacillating
inability to do anything positive may be called a
policy. Two years and a half have passed since
this answer was returned to the Senate ; murder
and spoliation have continued unchecked; and
still not one action has been taken by the present
Administration to right the fearful wrongs
that have been committed, and still the public
has never been shown the material in possession
of the State Department.

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The following statements are contained in Sen-
ator Fall's speech. They form but a small pro-
portion of the cases that have been brought to
my own attention. But they are officially stated
by Senator Fall. President Wilson and Secre-
tary Bryan had it in their power, when these
statements were made over two years ago, at once
to find out whether or not they were well founded.
It was their duty immediately to investigate every
case thus specifically mentioned by Senator Fall
and either to take action or to furnish to the Sen-
ate and the people refutation of the .charges.
They did nothing whatsoever. They dared not
do anything whatsoever.

Senator Fall recites extracts from the report
of W. W. Suit, the chief of the Order of Railway
Conductors in the republic of Mexico; the state-
ment of Conductor T. J. O'Fallon ; the affidavits
of Conductor J. S. McCranie and Engineer J. D.
Kennedy, of August 3, 1913; all reciting in de-
tail the outrages committed in 1911, which re-
sulted in 500 American railroad men being driven
from Mexico. The chief of the Order of Rail-
way Conductors remarks very pertinently,
"Every American who has been in touch with the
situation and every citizen of other civilized coun-
tries sees the necessity of adding the Big Stick
to the Monroe Doctrine," which is merely a pic-
turesquely idiomatic way of stating the common-

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sense truth that unless resolute purpose and po-
tential force are put back of every such doctrine
or declaration of foreign policy, our enunciation
of the doctrine or declaration excites mere de-
rision.

These particular infamies complained of here,
like not a few to which Senator Fall calls atten-
tion, were committed prior to Mr. Wilson's com-
ing to power; but Mr. Wilson has never sought
redress for them or for the outrages committed
since he has been in power. Senator Fall, for in-
stance, asks, "What has been done to investigate
the death of Mrs. Anderson, which occurred in
Chihuahua on June 22, 1911? Not under this
Administration. This is no partisan question
and I think I will be acquitted of any attempt to
take any possible partisan or political advantage
in what I shall say as to the last Administration
and this Administration; but I should like to
know whether there has been any attempt what-
soever made to investigate the case to which I
have just referred."

He then recites the facts. Mrs. Anderson was
a poor woman, living with her little daughter of
thirteen and her little boy of seven in their house.
The soldiers of Madero's army entered the house
and demanded that she should cook for them.
She was shot, fell to the ground, compelled to rise
from the ground and continue to cook, although

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bleeding to death ; and at the same time her little
daughter, thirteen years old, was outraged in her
presence. The boy of a neighbor, running to
their assistance, was shot at the door of the house
and killed. The American colonists, not being at
that time as intimidated as they have since been,
procured the arrest of the men charged with this
crime. They were convicted, were sent for six
months to jail, and then were turned loose upon
the community. The woman died.

A little American girl of twelve, Mabel Rich-
ardson, was assailed seventeen miles from where
this first outrage occurred. Her assailants were
never punished; and Senator Fall in his speech
recited the fact that not one word, not one line of
protest ever proceeded from our Government in
the matter, although these were among the cases
to which he referred in his speech in the Senate
on July 22, 1912.

James W. Harvey was killed in the state of
Chihuahua in May, 1912.

William Adams, a citizen of Senator Fall's
own state, was murdered at about the same time,
and not an effort was made by the Government
to punish the perpetrator of the outrage.

In the case of A. J. Fountain, who was killed,
the Government did act, and its action was worse
than inaction. It notified the man responsible
for the murder that American citizens must not

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MEXICO

be killed. This man, named Salazar, serving un-
der Madero, disregarded the notice sent him,
killed another American, and when Senator Fall
made his speech he had fled from the Huertistas
and was living under the protection of our Gov-
ernment at El Paso. Says Senator Fall: "He
is eating three square meals a day on this side
of the river at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas,
protected by American soldiers. Meals are be-
ing provided and paid for by the taxpayers of
this Government for something over four thou-
sand of the Mexicans who came across the river."

Joshua Stevens was killed near Colonia Pa-
checo, Mexico, on August 25, 1912, and his two
little daughters assaulted. The case was brought
to the attention of the State Department, but no
protest was made.

Johnny Brooks was killed at Colonia, Chihua-
hua, in May, 1913. He, however, was a former
Texas Ranger and, after being mortally wounded
by five assailants, he killed their leader, a Mexi-
can lieutenant, before he himself died. This man
had been originally in the employ of Senator Fall
himself. His life was taken without the slightest
provocation, and nothing was ever done by our
Government to demand reparation.

On July 26, 1913, near Tampico, Matthew
Gourd, from the State of Iowa, and his daughter
and niece were attacked by Mexicans. Gourd

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was tied to a tree and his daughter and niece out-
raged in his presence. Apparently the only ac-
tion taken by President Wilson's Administration
was to send word to the American Consul at
Tampico that a Red Cross ship would be sent
down there for a short while and that all Ameri-
cans should be notified that if they desired they
could go on board it and leave Mexico !

On June 18, 1913, Rogers Palmer, an English
citizen, was killed, and Carl von Brandts and L.
W. Elder, American citizens, were wounded in
Tampico, while endeavoring to defend Ameri-
can women from the attack of certain of Villa's
bandits.

About the same time H. W. Stepp, an Ameri-
can, was shot because of his refusal to pay five
hundred pesos ransom.

Edmund Hayes and Robert Thomas were
killed by Santa Caravo. Senator Fall personally
called the attention of President Wilson and Sec-
retary Bryan to the fact that the murderer was
walking the streets of Juarez, five minutes' ride
from El Paso. The Department demanded his
arrest and punishment. He was arrested, but
nothing more has been heard of the case; and
Senator Fall could get no answer to his requests
to know what the Government had done to back
up its threats and to enforce the punishment of
this man, a red-handed murderer of two men,

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MEXICO

among the best-known American pioneers in
Mexico.

Benjamin Griffin, a ranchman, was murdered
July 5, 1913. No reparation has been obtained.

John H. Williams, a mining engineer; Boris
Gadow, a consulting engineer, and U. G. Wolf,
a mining engineer, were all shot, but nothing
was done about it. I quote verbatim from what
Senator Fall says of the next case he mentions :
"Frank Ward was shot in the back by bandits
near Yago, Tepic Territory, April 9, 1913. I
endeavored to obtain information, not by asking
the State Department, but from other sources, as
I have been compelled to obtain information in
other cases. For a long while it was impossible
for me to get the facts of the occurrence result-
ing in Ward's killing, because when American
women are attacked and outraged, they them-
selves and their friends attempt to keep their
names out of the press and avoid in every way
possible publicity in matters of that kind. But I
can say to you now, Mr. President, that an affi-
davit is on file in the American Embassy in the
City of Mexico from Mrs. Ward herself stating
that when her husband was shot, and writhing in
his wounds on the floor, she was outraged by
Mexican bandit's, who then killed him. The affi-
davit is on file. Has any attempt been made to
secure the punishment of those guilty of this

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crime?" No; President Wilson took no action
whatever.

Senator Fall went on to enumerate scores of
similar murders and outrages. It would be use-
less to recapitulate them. I call attention only to
one or two cases. A United States Customs In-
spector, John S. H. Howard, was assassinated
near Eagle Pass, Texas. The United States
Government did nothing, but in this particular
case the State of Texas caught one of the assas-
sins and dealt with him, says the Senator, "as
Texas is prepared to deal, I am glad to say, with
other assassins."

L. Bushnell, a mounted policeman, was killed
in Naco, Arizona, by a bullet from over the line,
March 24, 1913. R. H. Ferguson, a member of
the troop F, Third United States Cavalry, was
killed by a bullet fired over the border in similar
manner.

Senator Fall states that it is probable that not
as many Americans have been killed during the
last two years as during the preceding three
years, because the Americans have been driven
out of Mexico by herds. On July 28, 1913, he
notified the Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, that
he had in his possession a list of 284 men, 301
women and 1,266 children, all of them Americans,
who had been driven out of Mexico for no fault
of their own. They were people of small means;

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MEXICO

their little cottages had been burned to the ground
in most cases. Secretary of State Bryan ac-
knowledged the receipt of the letter and did noth-
ing whatever about it. President Wilson sup-
ported Mr. Bryan in the matter.

Senator Fall gave minutely and in detail case
after case of unspeakable outrages. He showed
that these cases were called specifically to the at-
tention of the Administration and that the Ad-
ministration deliberately declined to act on be-
half of the unfortunate beings who had suffered
such dreadful wrong. He recited, what has been
told to me personally by other men who have seen
Mr. Bryan, that Mr. Bryan declined to act in be-
half of Americans who had lost their property, on
the ground that he was not interested in "pro-
tecting American dollars." But the enormous
majority of the men, women and children who
have suffered in Mexico belong to the class of
those persons of small means who support them-
selves by their own work. Undoubtedly the de-
struction of property has fallen upon the wealthy
no less than upon the humble ; but the American
women who have been outraged, the American
men who have been killed and the American chil-
dren who have been deprived of their parents or
of their homes, in the immense majority of cases,
belong to the class whose means are small.

President Wilson and Secretary Bryan en-
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deavored to "protect the dollars" of wealthy for-
eign corporations by purchasing from or through
them the German ships interned in our ports, and
they endeavored to "protect the dollars" of
wealthy property owners who desired to make
fortunes through the sale of contraband, but they
made no effective protest, they took no action
whatever, as regards the railway conductors, the
brakemen, the small farmers and ranchmen, the
mining engineers, our fellow citizens peacefully
plying their trades in Mexico, whose property
was taken from them, who themselves were some-
times killed and whose wives and daughters,
American women, American girls, sometimes
suffered outrages worse than death.

It is eminently right to "protect American dol-
lars," so long as this can be done without inter-
fering with the just rights of others. It is even
more necessary to protect the persons and lives
of American men and women. But what shall
we say of the governmental representatives who
do neither, and seek to cover their failure by
prattle about despising "dollars"? Especially
when on the high seas they treat "dollars" as of
more importance than the lives of women and
children ?

Let me repeat that I quote Senator Fall only
because he has spoken as a Senator, so that his
remarks are contained in an official document,

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which should be circulated broadcast throughout
the United States. I relate a few of the specific
cases he quotes merely as instances, to show that
our public officials have had multitudes of such
cases specifically called to their attention. Any
number of similar statements to those of Senator
Fall have been made to me by private individuals.
American after American has told me that our
fellow-countrymen are eagerly seeking to obtain
English or German citizenship, and American
heads of corporations in Mexico have told me that
they are employing only Germans or Englishmen,
because, though Englishmen and Germans are
not treated well in Mexico, they are infinitely bet-
ter treated than Americans.

There is no government in the world for which
the Mexican people now feel the profound con-
tempt that they feel for the United States Gov-
ernment ; and we owe this contempt to the way in
which our governmental authorities have behaved
during the last five years, but especially during
the last three years. Well-meaning people praise
President Wilson for having preserved "peace"
with Mexico, and avoided the "hostility" of Mex-
ico. As a matter of fact his action has steadily
increased Mexican hostility, has not prevented
the futile and infamous little "war" in which we
first took and then abandoned Vera Cruz, and
has been responsible for death, outrage and suf-

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fering which have befallen hundreds of Ameri-
cans and hundreds of thousands of Mexicans
during the carnival of crime and bloodshed with
which this "peace" has prevented interference.

Senator Fall made it evident in his speech that
he held no brief for either of the contending
Mexican factions. He described Huerta in lan-
guage of just severity, but he showed, what every
man in his senses knows, that Villa has been a
bandit and murderer by profession, and a mur-
derer, robber and outrager of women since he
has become a general in the revolution. Car-
ranza and his party have stood precisely on the
same level of bandit-murder. There was no rea-
son whatever for any American to uphold Huer-
ta ; but to antagonize him on moral grounds, and
then to endeavor to replace him by a polyga-
mous bandit, was not compatible with any intelli-
gent system of international ethics. Nor did any
betterment follow from dropping this bandit, and
putting the power of the United States Govern-
ment behind another bandit. It may be en-
tirely proper to take the view that we have no
concern with the morality of any chief who is for
the time being the ruler of Mexico. But to do as
President Wilson has done and actively take sides
against Huerta and for Villa, condemning the
former for misdeeds, and ignoring the far worse
misdeeds of the latter, and then to abandon Villa

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and support against him Carranza, who was re-
sponsible for exactly the same kind of hideous
outrages against Americans, and insults to the
American flag, is an affront to all who believe in
straightforward sincerity in American public
life.

Senator Fall gives in detail the circumstances
of a few of Villa's crimes, some of them so shock-
ing that any decent man's blood boils as he reads
them. Villa's efficiency has unquestionably been
great, but it has been efficiency of the type which
in the reign of King Bomba gave certain Sicilian
and Calabrian bandit chiefs international prom-
inence. The statements of Senator Fall have
never been successfully questioned. Villa can,
of course, be defended, but only in the sense that
it is possible to defend Geronimo or some other
Apache chief of Geronimo's type; to defend Villa
as representing freedom and justice and democ-
racy in the sense that the words are used in
speaking of civilized nations is literally like de-
fending an old-time Apache chief on the same
grounds. The sincerity of such a defence can
escape question only if the defender is admitted
to be entirely ignorant of all concerning which
he speaks.

It is not possible to give all the facts in full.
For this the responsibility lies entirely with the
President, for he has consistently carried out a

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policy of secrecy as regards the outrages on our
citizens in Mexico. He has persistently refused
to let the facts be known. He has worked in the
darkness and behind cover. He has followed the
policy of preventing all publicity. He has con-
cealed the truth and furtively evaded telling the
truth. But nevertheless we do know the facts
in a very large number of cases. From the in-
formation available, it appears that over two
hundred American lives have been lost in Mex-
ico; that as regards none of them has redress
been secured, and that as regards most of them
it has not even been demanded.

Apparently many hundreds of millions of dol-
lars of American capital was invested in Mexico,
and of this almost all is gone. As before stated,
when remonstrated with on this subject, Mr.
Bryan, speaking for President Wilson, repeat-
edly informed callers that he was not "interested
in American dollars"; that Americans who in-
vested in property in foreign countries could not
look to this Government to protect them. Yet at
that very time another member of the Cabinet
who sat at the same council board with Mr.
Bryan was making an earnest appeal that Ameri-
cans should invest their property — "dollars" — in
enterprises in South America; and at that very
time Mr. Bryan, in accordance with the orders of
Mr. Wilson, was making protests about the in-

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terference with American property — "dollars" —
on the high seas.

Of course what Messrs. Wilson and Bryan
say about "American dollars" is a mere rhetor-
ical flourish in any event. If we have no right
under any circumstances to jeopardize life to pro-
tect property in international matters, then we
have no right to jeopardize it to protect property
in municipal matters. If the Wilson-Bryan doc-
trine is true, then no policeman should arrest any
violent offender for a crime less than murder or
rape, and no householder should defend himself
against a burglar or highwayman, for in such
case he is undoubtedly jeopardizing the life either
of his assailant or himself in order to "protect
dollars."

However, President Wilson's practice is a little
worse even than his theory. His theory has been
that he would not protect American property in
Mexico. His practice has been that he would not
protect American men from murder and Ameri-
can women from rape in Mexico. And at the
same time President Wilson, in striving to
secure and protect certain kinds of prop-
erty— that is, in dealing with matters of contra-
band and of the purchase of the interned ships
of one of the powers now at war — has been fol-
lowing in feeble and irresolute fashion a policy
which it is quite conceivable would, if successful,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

let us drift into war in peculiarly ignoble fashion.

The Hague conventions bound us to protest
against the dreadful wrong done to the men,
women and children of Belgium. President Wil-
son declined to make any protest on behalf of
human life, lest to do so might embroil us with
some powerful outside nation; but he protests
heartily against any interference with our selling
copper to be used in the warlike operations
against these same Belgians; thereby showing
that in practice he puts property rights above
those highest of human rights which concern the
lives of the helpless.

A year ago President Wilson spoke on the
subject of Mexico in a speech at Indianapo-
lis. At the beginning of his speech he said, "I
got very tired staying in Washington and saying
sweet things. I wanted to come out and get in
touch with you once more and say what I really
thought." Disregarding the implication as to
his own past sincerity contained in this statement,
we have a right to take the speech as expressing
his deliberate conviction and purpose. He said
that he possessed "a reckless enthusiasm for hu-
man liberty," and then spoke of his own policy
of "watchful waiting in Mexico." Apparently,
in his mind "watchful waiting" is a species of
"reckless enthusiasm." He asserted that the peo-
ple of Mexico have a right to do anything they

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MEXICO

please about their business, saying, "It is none
of my business; it is none of your business how
long they take in determining it. It is none of
my business and it is none of yours how they go
about the business. Haven't the European na-
tions taken as long as they wanted and spilled as
much blood as they pleased in settling their af-
fairs ? Shall we deny that to Mexico because she
is weak?"

This is the kind of language that can be used
about Mexico with sincerity only if it is also to
be applied to Dahomey and to outrages like those
of the French Commune. It cannot in the long
run be accepted by any great state which is both
strong and civilized nor by any statesman with
a serious purpose to better mankind. In point
of public morality it is fundamentally as evil
a declaration as has ever been put forth by an
American President in treating of foreign af-
fairs ; and there is to it the added touch of ineffi-
ciency.

Moreover, President Wilson's words, bad
though they are, have not been borne out by his
deeds. He has actively interfered in Mexico on
behalf of some of those spillers of blood whose
right to "spill" blood he exuberantly champions.
He has not interfered to punish the bandits and
murderers who have killed American men and
outraged American women. He has not in-

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terfered to protect the honor and the interest
of the United States. He has not interfered
to protect the lives and the property of our citi-
zens or of the citizens of any other country. But
he has interfered to help put into power the very
worst among the leaders of the various murder-
ous and thieving groups and factions, and then
to replace him with the next worst.

President Wilson refused to run the risk of
shedding the blood of any American soldiers to
protect American citizens and put a stop to an-
archy and murder and prevent further blood-
spilling or to try to bring peace to the distracted
land of Mexico. He refused to run the risk of
shedding the blood of any American soldier in
order to prevent the killing of American soldiers
and American private citizens on our own terri-
tory by Mexicans who shot at or toward them
from the other side of the border line. The rape
of women, the murder of men and the cruel
treatment of little children left his tepid soul
unstirred. Insult to the American flag, nameless
infamies on American women, caused him not
one single pulse of emotion. But he wantonly
and without the smallest excuse and without the
smallest benefit to this country shed the blood of
several scores of American soldiers and sailors in
order to help put one blood-stained bandit in the
place of another blood-stained bandit. And he

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MEXICO

now, without any reason of morality or sound
public policy, is helping a third blood-stained
bandit against his former ally and protege, the
second bandit.

Murder and torture; rape and robbery; the
death of women by outrage and children by star-
vation; the shooting of men by the thousand in
cold blood — Mr. Wilson takes note of these facts
only to defend the right of vicious and disorderly
Mexicans to "spill" as much as they please of the
blood of their peaceful fellow-citizens and of
law-abiding foreigners. But when the chance
came for him to use the Army and Navy of the
United States in favor of the worst offender
among all the rival bandit chiefs, he eagerly
clutched at it.

Senator Lodge, in his speech of January 6,
1915, discussed at length what President Wilson
has done in this matter, and no successful at-
tempt has been made or can be made to answer
what he then said. His speech, together with the
speech of Senator Fall and the speech of Senator
Borah, should be circulated among all honest
citizens who wish to know what the facts really
are.

The country should clearly understand the aw-
ful misery that has been brought upon Mexico
by President Wilson's policy. It is extraordi-
nary that we do not realize that, thanks to our

277

own selfishness and heedlessness, thanks to the
dishonorable timidity of the Administration,
the conditions of life in Mexico are worse at this
moment than the conditions of life in the regions
over which the contending armies in Europe have
fought. In 1914 we sent Christmas ships abroad
to the war-stricken countries of Europe. This
was well ; but why did we neglect Mexico, where
our own responsibility is so heavy?

At that very time a pathetic appeal had been
issued by a company of Mexicans near the inter-
national boundary line addressed "To the Ameri-
can People and their Exalted Authorities." It
was a plea for work for the men and bread for
the women and children. They asked for work,
for justice, for bread. Conditions like those
which in Europe have shocked the civilized world
have existed here right against our own borders,
for four years, unconsidered by us.

As the wife of one of our consuls-general has
said: "Mexico is peopled with widows and or-
phans, and famine is in the land. One sees it
daily, in emaciated forms, shrunken cheeks,
tightly drawn skin and burning eyes. It is in the
faces of women, old men and little children.
Many have died on American soil during the
past year, ostensibly from obscure disease, but
actually from starvation, and there are hundreds
of children who have never had sufficient food

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MEXICO

in their pitiful little lives. That is the heart-
breaking tragedy in it all — the unsmiling little
children who sit silently by the doors of the huts
through the long hours of long days. The sound
of laughter and of playing children has been
stilled in Mexico. From these people comes a
cry of bread for the starving. The United States
has claimed the exclusive right to intervene in
Mexican affairs. Will we demand the right and
repudiate the obligation?"

This is the state of affairs to which Mexico has
been brought by the practical application of Mr.
Bryan's doctrine as to not caring for "American
dollars" (it is American dollars that buy food
for the starving, Mr. Bryan!) and of President
Wilson's doctrine that we must not interfere or
let any one else interfere to stop "spilling blood"
in Mexico. President Wilson's position meets
the enthusiastic approval of the bandits who spill
the blood. It meets and it merits the enthusi-
astic support of the blood-smeared leaders to
whom his inaction has given the chance to mur-
der men and outrage women and to let little chil-
dren starve.

But the laughter of little children has been
stilled in Mexico. It has been stilled because
President Wilson in his handling of the Mexican
problem, as in his handling of every other branch
of our foreign affairs, has placed this country in

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the position of shirking its plain duty, of seeking
its own ignoble ease beyond everything else, and
of declining to protect its own citizens or to fulfill
its international obligations or to interfere for
the weak and helpless, when rapine and murder
stalk in insolent mastery over the land.

Our course as regards Mexico has been a
terrible thing for Mexico. It has been a shame-
ful thing for the United States. But if this
policy is permanently continued, there will be
yet further shame in store for the United
States. Sooner or later the war in Europe will
come to an end; and then the great armed na-
tions, after a more or less brief interval, will cer-
tainly turn their attention to us and to Mexico.
We cannot forbid interference with Mexico in
the name of the Monroe Doctrine and yet fail to
fulfill the obligation imposed on us by common
humanity if we maintain that doctrine.

Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen, Italians,
Frenchmen, have been wronged in Mexico, only
less than our own citizens have been wronged —
only less than decent and well-behaved Mexicans
have been wronged — by the inhuman bandits to
whom our Government has furnished arms and
aid for the perpetration of their crimes. Presi-
dent Wilson in his messages has confusedly ad-
vocated, first that we stay unprepared and help-
less in the face of military nations, and next that

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MEXICO

we go into a policy of half-way preparation; and
in actual fact he has not made even the smallest
advance towards preparedness. He also advo-
cates that in Mexico we pursue the policy of let-
ting the violent and disorderly elements of the
population slowly destroy all the leading men,
all the reputable people, and bring destruction by
fire and steel, by disease and famine, on the hum-
ble men and women and little children, and also
on the strangers within their gates.

The self-respecting and powerful nations of
the world will not permanently permit such a
course of action. We will not permanently be
permitted to render ourselves impotent in the
face of possible aggression and at the same time
try to forbid other nations from righting wrongs
which we are too weak, too timid or too short-
sighted ourselves to right. In the end foreign na-
tions will assuredly take issue with the Wilson-
Bryan theory, which is that America can adopt as
her permanent policy the shirking of national
duty by this country, combined with a protest
against any other country doing the duty which
we have shirked. Either we shall have to abandon
the Monroe Doctrine and let other nations restore
order in Mexico, and then deprive us of any right
to speak in behalf of any people of the Western
Hemisphere, or else we must in good faith our-
selves undertake the task and bring peace and

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

order and prosperity to Mexico, as by our wise
intervention it was brought to Cuba.

In the last five years the suffering in Mexico
has in the aggregate far surpassed the suffering
in Belgium during the last eighteen months.
Dark deeds have been done in Belgium, but they
have not been as dark as the fiendish atrocities
perpetrated in Mexico. For these Mexican
atrocities the United States Government must
shoulder a very heavy load of responsibility,
thanks chiefly to President Wilson's Administra-
tion.

The other day a friend of mine, a German dip-
lomat, wrote to me taking exception to my con-
demnation of Germany because of its acts to-
ward Belgium, and his letter ran partly as fol-
lows : "You do not refer to the present Mexican
question, at which I am not astonished. Don't
you believe it would have been rather queer to
get a protest about Belgium from a government
which had created the most extraordinary breach
of international-law-impossibilities (please ex-
cuse this queer expression) by at first not rec-
ognizing a President of a neighboring country,
with whom it seemed on good terms, then allow-
ing arms to be sent to the revolutionaries in that
country, not to recognize them as belligerents
though ; then to forbid this export of arms, then
to allow it again; to occupy by force a port, to

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MEXICO

leave it again, and to wind up by leaving the
country in question — which was supposed to
benefit by all this, at least that was what we out-
siders were told — with, I think, five Presidents
fighting one another and ruining the country
completely. I think the results for Mexico have
been worse than our invasion of Belgium."

There was no adequate answer that I could
make to my German 'friend; and in the wrongs
done to Belgium by Germany, Germany has at
least shown strength and fearlessness and effi-
ciency, whereas the course of the Administration
in regard to Mexico has branded our country
with the brand of feebleness, timidity and vacil-
lation. A weakling who fears to stand up man-
fully for the right may work as much mischief
as any strong-armed wrongdoer. For two years
President Wilson has decreed that Mexican
malefactors shall be allowed at will to spill the
blood of the innocent, and because of this atti-
tude of President Wilson, American men have
been wantonly murdered and American women
outraged, while the famine-stricken women of
Mexico mourn, and among their starving chil-
dren there is no laughter.

283

CHAPTER IX

WHEN IS AN AMERICAN NOT AN AMERICAN?

THE following two letters show an attitude
on the part of the National Administration
which challenges the careful consideration of
every American. The letters, which were sent
me by Mr. John M. Parker, of New Orleans,
explain themselves:

Hon. William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of

State, Washington, D. C.
Your Excellency:

My father, P. A. Lelong, was a native of
France and came to New Orleans when he was
about twenty years of age; lived here about forty
years. He died here about two years ago, but
about five years before his death took out natu-
ralization papers.

I was born in New Orleans, June 18, 1880. I
have never been out of the United States and
have regularly voted as an American citizen since
I reached the age of twenty-one years, and if

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DUAL NATIONALITY

war had ever occurred between France and the
United States, I most certainly would have
fought for the United States. I have held the
office of Township Commissioner in Henderson
County, North Carolina ; have held several court
appointments, both Federal and State, and am a
member of the State and Federal bar, and have
considered myself as much an American citizen
as President Wilson or any of the members of
the Cabinet.

I wish to visit France on business in the near
future, and am informed by Mr. Ferrand and the
French Consul here that if I go to France I could
be either impressed into the French service or
punished for not having reported for military
duty, and also for having served in the State
Militia of Louisiana without permission from
the French Government.

I contend that if the French Government had
any right to claim me as a citizen under their
laws, in times of peace they should have called
on me to serve my three years in their military
service.

Wishing to know whether my constitutional
privileges as an American citizen follow me
wherever I go, with its constitutional guarantees,
or whether the United States Government will
allow the French Government to act in the man-
ner as stated by Mr. Ferrand, the French Consul,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

I respectfully request an answer at as early a
date as possible.

Respectfully yours,
(Signed) P. A. L£I,ONG, JR.

To this the following answer was returned:

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

WASHINGTON, April 2, 1915.
Mr. P. A. Lelong, Junior, 832 Union Street,

New Orleans, Louisiana.
Sir:

The Department has received your letter of
March 27, 1915, stating that you expect to go to
France on business in the near future and in-
quiring whether you would be molested by the
French military authorities. You say that you
were born in New Orleans, June 18, 1880, and
that your father, a native of France, resided in
this country about forty years and obtained
naturalization as a citizen of the United States
shortly before his death, which occurred about
two years ago.

Under the provision of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment to.the Constitution, all persons born in the
United States and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof are citizens of the United States. Sec-
tion one, Article VII of the French Civil Code,
states that the following are Frenchmen : "Every

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DUAL NATIONALITY

person born of a Frenchman in France or
abroad."

It thus appears that you were born with a dual
nationality, and the Department cannot there-
fore give you any assurance that you would not
be held liable for the performance of military
service in France should you voluntarily place
yourself within French jurisdiction.
I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

For the Secretary of State,
(Signed) ROBERT LANSING,

Counselor.

One effect of this decision, on an American
citizen who actually went abroad, reached me in
a letter I received, dated November 6th, 1915,
from Camp House, Short Hills, New Jersey.
The writer is an Italian woman, Elizabeth Par-
ness. Her husband, Vito Parness, is not only a
naturalized citizen, but has served in the Elev-
enth Cavalry, United States Army, for three
years, being discharged a non-commissioned of-
ficer. In November, 1914, he went to Italy to see
his old father and mother and has not been al-
lowed to return. His wife writes me that she is
in dire poverty, having no means of support;
that the State Department has been notified, but
that nothing has been done. But it is, perhaps,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

natural that when native-born Americans are
murdered and their wives raped with impunity
in Mexico, naturalized Americans, even although
ex-United States soldiers, receive no protection
in Europe.

I hold that it is the clear duty of the American
people immediately to repudiate the doctrine thus
laid down by the Wilson Administration. Ac-
cording to this doctrine there are in our coun-
try very many citizens — and, as a matter of
fact, this ruling would apply to millions of citi-
zens— who are "born with a dual nationality."
Two or three years ago it was announced that
Germany had passed a law by which she provided
for her citizens, who became naturalized in the
United States or elsewhere, the means of also re-
taining their German citizenship, so that these
men would preserve a dual citizenship, what the
Department of State in this letter of April 2nd
last calls " a dual nationality/' I hold that it was
the business of our Government as soon as this
statement was published to investigate the facts,
to require would-be citizens to repudiate this law,
and to notify the German Government that we
protested against and would refuse to recognize
its action; that we declined to recognize or ac-
quiesce in the principle of such a dual citizenship
or a dual nationality ; that we would hold natural-
ized citizens to the full performance of the duties

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DUAL NATIONALITY

of American citizenship, which were necessarily
exclusive of and inconsistent with the profession
of citizenship in or allegiance to any other na-
tion, and that in return we would extend the same
protection to these citizens that is extended to
native-born citizens. Such action was not taken.
It is a reproach to us as a nation that it was not
taken. We should not for a moment tolerate
the assumption by Germany or by any other
foreign power that foreign-born citizens of the
United States can retain any citizenship in or
allegiance to the country from which they came.
But the present case is even worse. It seems
incredible that the Department of State can pro-
mulgate the doctrine of dual nationality pro-
mulgated in its letter above quoted. Yet it has
been asserted and reasserted, both before and
since Mr. Bryan left office. It is dangerously
close to treason to the United States to hold
that men born here of foreign parentage, men
who have served in the militia in this country,
who vote and hold office and exercize all the
other rights of citizenship, and who in good faith
are and always have been Americans, should,
nevertheless, be blandly informed by the State
Department that if they visit the countries in
which their parents were born they can be seized,
punished for evasion of military duty, or made
to serve in the army.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Let me point out a few of the possible applica-
tions of the doctrines thus laid down by the De-
partment of State. If Colonel Goethals went to
Holland he would be liable to be shipped out for
military service in Sumatra. If Admirals Oster-
haus and Schroeder had gone to Germany they
could have been forced to serve under Admiral
von Tirpitz in the German navy. If General
Barry should visit England he could be seized
and sent to the trenches in France. If my neigh-
bors Messrs. Peter Dunne and Mark Sullivan,
and my friends Judge O'Brien and James Con-
oily and Charles Conolly, went to England they
could be impressed into the British army for
service in Flanders or Ireland. If the sons of
Jacob Riis went to Denmark they could be re-
tained in the Danish forces. If the son of the
great war correspondent McGahan, whose
mother was a Russian lady, went to Russia, he
could be sent to serve in the Carpathians. Presi-
dent Andrew Jackson on this theory could have
been impressed for military service in the English
army against which he fought at New Orleans,
if he had ever happened to visit England; and
President Arthur would have been in the same
plight.

Such incidents seem like the phantasmagoria
of an unpleasant dream. Until I saw this letter
of April 2nd last, I had not supposed that it

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DUAL NATIONALITY

would be possible for any human being in our
country to uphold such a proposition. Yet in
point of rights, Mr. Lelong stands exactly level
with the men whom I have thus instanced.
Surely it ought not to be necessary to say that
the rights of every citizen in this land are as
great and as sacred as those of any other citizen.
The United States cannot with self-respect per-
mit its organic and fundamental law to be over-
ridden by the laws of a foreign country. It can-
not acknowledge any such theory as this of "a
dual nationality" — which, incidentally, is a self-
evident absurdity.

Mr. Lelong was born in this country; when
he became of age he elected to exercise his birth-
right granted to him by the Constitution of the
United States; he took an oath to support that
Constitution, and he has held military office un-
der its authority, and under the authority of two
states of the American Union. He is eligible to
the Presidency of the United States. He is a
citizen of the United States, standing on an exact
equality of right with all other citizens, and he is
entitled to the full protection of the United States
both in and out of any foreign country, free and
exempt from any provision of the law of that
country as to citizenship. There should not be a
moment's delay in asserting this doctrine, not
only as regards Mr. Lelong and France, but as

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

regards Germany in connection with her law
providing for a dual citizenship so far as it con-
cerns immigrants from Germany who become
citizens of the United States.

We should assert in the face of all the nations
of the world, of France and England, of Russia,
Austria and Germany, the principle that we our-
selves determine for ourselves the rights of citi-
zenship of our citizens, that we champion them
in the full exercise of these rights as against
any foreign power that interferes with them, and
that in return we hold them to a full accounta-
bility for the exercise of these rights in the sole
interest of the United States as against any
foreign power which claims any allegiance what-
soever from them.

292

CHAPTER X

JAPANESE IN KOREA

JAPAN is indeed a wonderful land. Nothing
in history has quite paralleled her rise dur-
ing the last fifty years. Her progress has been
remarkable alike in war, in industry, in states-
manship, in science. Her admirals and generals,
her statesmen and administrators, have accom-
plished feats with which only the greatest feats
of the picked men of corresponding position in
Europe and the two Americas during the same
time can be compared — and in order to match in
the aggregate these great men of a single island
nation, more than one of the countries of the
Occident must be drawn on.

Among the Japanese administrators of high
note is Count Terauchi, and among Japan's many
feats of consequence is her administration of
Korea. Count Terauchi is the Governor-Gen-
eral of Korea — Chosen, as the Japanese term it —
and he has just compiled and published at Seoul
(Keijo) a report on the "Reform and Progress
in Chosen" for the years 1912-1913. It is in
English ; and no book of the kind recently issued

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PEAR GOD AND TARE YOUR OWN PART

is better worth the study of statesmen and of
scholars interested in every kind of social re-
form. Moreover, its study is of capital conse-
quence from the standpoint of those who recog-
nize the importance of bringing home to our peo-
ple the knowledge of the admirable and masterly
achievements of the Japanese in the difficult task
of colonial administration.

In its essence the work that has been done in
Korea under Count Terauchi is like that done
under similar conditions by the chief colonial ad-
ministrators of the United States, England,
France and Germany. Korea as an independent
nation could not keep order at home and was
powerless to strike an effective blow on her own
behalf when assailed from abroad. She had been
dominated by Russia, so that all obligations of
foreign powers to help her keep her independence
had lapsed long before the outbreak of the Russo-
Japanese war; and under the circumstances her
subsequent domination, and, in 1910, her final
annexation by Japan was inevitable. The
Japanese have restored and enforced order,
built roads and railways, carried out great engi-
neering works, introduced modern sanitation, in-
troduced a modern school system and doubled the
commerce and the agricultural output, substan-
tially as the most advanced nations of Europe
and America have done under like conditions.

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THE JAPANESE IN KOREA

All of these matters and many others — such as
the administration of justice, the founding of
industrial and agricultural banks, the establish-
ment of government experiment farms, the reve-
nues, the government monopoly in ginseng and
salt manufacture, the charitable institutions —
are treated in full in the volume before me, and
in addition to the letter-press there are numerous
first-rate photographs.

One of the interesting touches in the book is
that describing the way tourist parties of Ko-
reans are formed to visit Japan and study its ad-
vanced systems of agriculture, industry and edu-
cation. The visits are generally timed so as to
see a national or some local industrial exhibition.
Tourist parties of Korean countrymen often
visit the capital, Keijo, with a similar educational
purpose. The Japanese are endeavoring to in-
troduce their language, culture and industry into
the country, and are taking very practical steps
to introduce the Koreans to the high modern
civilization of the new rulers of the land.

One of the great works done by the Japanese
in Korea has been in reforesting the country.
This has been carried on in the most scientific
manner — a manner, I regret to say, smacking
more of German efficiency than of any large-
scale forestry process in our own country. Over
five million trees have been planted, the best

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

European models serving as examples. Arbor
Day has been instituted, and is celebrated just as
in various states of the American Union, the
school children being especially interested. But,
with their usual wisdom and far-sighted, prac-
tical good sense, the Japanese officials not only
adopt anything foreign that may be useful, but
also develop anything native that can be made
more useful. The provincial governments have
devoted much energy to the revival of an ancient
Korean guild, the Songkei, which had for its
object the promoting of interest in pine forests.
All kinds of interesting contrasts between the
very old and the very new are brought out in-
cidentally; as, for example, the trouble of the
health authorities with the Korean "grave geo-
mancers," and their efforts to substitute the hy-
gienic practice of cremation for burial.

An excellent instance of the kind of foresight
which ought to be imitated in the United States
is the action taken in protecting whales. Whal-
ing on the east coast of Korea is very lucrative;
but the whales have been over-fished; and the
government has now established a close season,
has prohibited all whaling outside certain areas,
has limited the number of vessels that can be
employed, and has forbidden the capture of
mother whales accompanied by their young.

All this of which I speak is only to indicate
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THE JAPANESE IN KOREA

what the volume tells of Japanese administration
in Korea. To describe it fully, and to comment
on it with knowledge, would need an expert. I
am writing as the merest layman. My purpose
is simply to call attention to the matter. It is to
be wished that the Japanese society would repub-
lish the volume and make it generally accessible.

But the chief lesson it teaches is one which by
rights our people ought already to know well.
Japan is as advanced and civilized a power as the
United States or any power in Europe. She has
as much to teach us as we have to teach her.
In true patriotism — for there is no such thing as
true patriotism that does not include eager and
foresighted desire to make one's country able to
defend herself against foreign attack — Japan is
far ahead of us. There is no nation in the world
more worthy of admiration and respect. There
is no nation in the world with which it is more
important that the United States should be on
terms of cordial friendship and absolutely equal
mutuality of respect.

Japan's whole sea-front, and her entire home
maritime interest, bear on the Pacific; and of the
other great nations of the earth the United
States has the greatest proportion of her sea-
front on, and the greatest proportion of her in-
terest in, the Pacific. But there is not the slight-
est real or necessary conflict of interests between

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Japan and the United States in the Pacific.
When compared with each other, the interest
of Japan is overwhelmingly Asiatic, that of the
United States overwhelmingly American. Rela-
tively to each other, one is dominant in Asia, the
other in North America. Neither has any de-
sire, nor any excuse for desiring, to acquire ter-
ritory on the other's continent. With the ex-
ception of the Philippines, which the present Ad-
ministration has definitely committed the United
States to abandon in the near future, the insular
possessions of each clearly appertain to their re-
spective continents; Hawaii is almost as much
American as Formosa is Asiatic. Neither has
any interest in the Pacific Ocean itself except
to keep it as a broad highway open to all. Each
is a good customer of the other. Each has some-
thing to learn from and something to teach the
other. Each has every interest in preserving the
friendship of the other. For either to incur the
hostility of the other would in the end turn out
to be a folly, a calamity unrelieved by the slight-
est benefit. It may almost be said that the far-
sightedness and intelligence of any citizen of
either country can largely be measured by the
friendly respect he feels and shows for the other
country. Neither territorially, nor in commer-
cial interest, nor in international rivalry, is there

298

THE JAPANESE IN KOREA

*

any excuse for clashing. The two nations should
for all time work hand in hand.

The Japanese statesmen and leaders of thought
are doing all they can to keep on the best possible
footing with the United States. Although Ja-
pan was engaged in war she did everything in
her power to make the California-Panama Expo-
sition a success. Her exhibit was of peculiar
importance, because the exhibits of most of the
other great powers were greatly interfered with
by the war.

Every consideration, permanent and tempo-
rary, makes the continuance of a good under-
standing between the two nations of capital
importance. It is a grave offence against the
United States for any man, by word or deed,
to jeopardize this good understanding. To
do so by the act of a state legislature is even
graver. Any action by a state legislature
touching on the rights of foreigners of any
other nation should be taken with extreme cau-
tion, or it may cause serious mischief. Such
action cannot possibly have good effect on the
only matter that can ever cause trouble between
Japan and the United States — the settlement in
mass by individuals of either nation within the
limits of the other nation. Such immigration
is the only thing that can ever cause trouble be-
tween these two peoples; and if permitted it is

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PEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

absolutely certain that the trouble will be caused.
It can be dealt with only by the two national gov-
ernments themselves.

All true friends of international good-will be-
tween the two countries, all men who recognize
that good-will for the other should be a prime
feature of the foreign policy of each, will face
this fact and deal with it. The treatment of it
should be on an absolutely reciprocal basis. Ex-
actly the same types and classes should be admit-
ted and excluded, in one country as in the other.
Students, travelers, men engaged in interna-
tional business, sojourners for scholarship, health
or pleasure, of either country ought to be
welcomed in the other; and not thus to wel-
come them indicates defective civilization in the
should-be hosts. But it is essentially to the in-
terest of both that neither should admit the work-
ers— industrial or agricultural or engaged in
small trade — from the other, for neither country
is yet ready to admit such settlement in mass,
and nothing but grave harm can come from per-
mitting it.

Instead of ignoring this fact, it would be bet-
ter frankly to acknowledge and recognize it. It
does not in any way imply any inferiority in
either nation to the other ; it merely connotes the
acceptance of the truth that in international as in
private affairs, it is well not to hurry matters

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THE JAPANESE IN KOREA

that if unhurried will in the end come out all
right. The astounding thing, the thing unprec-
edented in all history, is that two civilized peo-
ples whose civilizations had developed for thou-
sands of years on almost wholly independent
lines, should within half a century grow so close
together. Fifty years ago there was no intellec-
tual or social community at all between the two
nations. Nowadays, the man of broad cultiva-
tion, whether in statesmanship, science, art or
philosophy, who dwells in one country, is as much
at home in the other as is a Russian in England,
or a Spaniard in the United States, or an Italian
in Sweden; the men of this type, whether Jap-
anese or Europeans, or North or South Ameri-
cans, are knit together in a kind of freemasonry
of social and intellectual taste.

It is quite impossible that a movement like this
shall be as rapid throughout all the classes of
society as among the selected few. It has taken
many centuries for Europeans to achieve a com-
mon standard such as to permit of the free im-
migration of the workers of one nation into an-
other nation, and there is small cause for won-
der in the fact that a few decades have been in-
sufficient to bring it about between Japan and the
American and Australian commonwealths. Ja-
pan would not, and could not, at this time afford
to admit into competition with her own people

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

masses of immigrants, industrial or agricultural
workers, or miners or small tradesmen, from the
United States. It would be equally unwise for
the United States to admit similar groups from
Japan. This does not mean that either side is
inferior; it means that they are different.

Three or four centuries ago exactly the same
thing was true as between and among the Euro-
pean countries from which the ancestors of the
mixed people of the United States came. At that
time English mobs killed and drove out Flemish
and French workingmen; Scotchmen would not
tolerate the presence of Englishmen even in time
of peace; Germans and Scandinavians met on
terms of intimacy only when they fought one an-
other; and Russians as immigrants in western
Europe were quite as unthinkable as Tartars.
Normally, no one of these nations would then
have tolerated any immigration of the people of
any other. Yet they were all of practically the
same racial blood, and in essentials of the same
ancestral culture, that of Graeco-Roman Chris-
tianity. And their descendants not only now live
side by side in the United States, but have
merged into one people. What would have been
ruinous even to attempt four centuries ago now
seems entirely natural because it has gone on so
slowly. To try to force the process with unnat-
ural speed would have insured disaster, even af-

302

THE JAPANESE IN KOREA

ter the upper classes of the countries concerned
had already begun to mingle on a footing of
equality.

Surely these obvious historical facts have their
lesson for Japanese and American statesmen to-
day. Three centuries ago the students, the
writers, the educated and cultivated men in Eng-
land and France (countries of equal, and prac-
tically the same, civilization) associated less in-
timately than the like men of America and Japan
do to-day, and any attempt at immigration of
the workers of one country into the other would
have been met by immediate rioting. Time, and
time alone, rendered possible the constantly
closer association of the peoples. Time must be
given the same chance now, in order to secure a
lasting and firmly based friendship between the
Japanese and the English-speaking peoples of
America and Australia.

The volume which has served as a text for this
article is only one additional proof of the way
in which Japan has modernized and brought
abreast of all modern needs her high and ancient
civilization. She is already playing a very great
part in the civilized world. She will play a still
greater part in the future. It may well be that
she will prove the regenerator of all eastern
Asia. She and the United States have great in-
terests on and in the Pacific. These interests in

3°3

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

no way conflict. They can be served to best
purpose for each nation by the heartiest and
most friendly cooperation between them on a
footing of absolute equality. There is but one
real chance of friction. This should be elimi-
nated, not by pretending to ignore facts, but by
facing them with good-natured and courteous
wisdom — for, as Emerson somewhere says, "in
the long run the most unpleasant truth is a safer
traveling companion than the most agreeable
falsehood." Each country should receive exactly
the rights which it grants. Travelers, scholars,
men engaged in international business, all so-
journers for health, pleasure and study, should
be heartily welcomed in both countries. From
neither country should there be any emigration
of workers of any kind to, or any settlement in
mass in, the other country.

CHAPTER' XI

THE PANAMA BLACKMAII, TREATY

IN 1903 a shameless and sordid attempt was
made by the then dictator of Colombia and
his subordinate fellow-politicians at Bogota to
force the United States by scandalously improper
tactics to pay a vastly larger sum for the priv-
ilege of building the Panama Canal than had
been agreed upon in a solemn treaty. As Presi-
dent of the United States I resisted this attempt,
and prevented the United States from being
blackmailed. Had I not successfully resisted the
attempt, the Panama Canal would not now be
built, and would probably never have been built.
The attempt was blackmail then; and to yield to
it now is to yield to blackmail.

Yet the present Administration now proposes
to pay Colombia twenty-five million dollars, and
to make what is practically an apology for our
conduct in acquiring the right to build the canal.
Apparently this is done on the theory of soothing
the would-be blackmailers and making them for-
get the mortification caused them by the failure

305

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

of their initial attempt to hold up the United
States.

In brief, the facts in the case were as follows:
A private French company had attempted to
build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and
had failed after making only a beginning of the
work. Various propositions for a trans-Isthmian
canal to be undertaken by the United States Gov-
ernment had been made. One of these was to
cross the Isthmus at Darien. Another was a
proposition to go through Nicaragua. Different
companies had been organized in the United
States to back these different propositions. One
of these companies had ex-Senator Warner Mil-
ler at its head. The then Senator Platt of New
York was much interested in another company.
Congress only considered seriously, however, the
Panama and Nicaragua routes, and was in much
doubt between them. A commission of experts
appointed by the President for that purpose had
reported that if we could buy the rights of the
French canal company for $40,000,000 we ought
to take the Panama route, but that otherwise we
should take the Nicaragua route. It was at that
time well and widely known that the sum of
$10,000,000 (aside from a small yearly payment
to be made on different grounds) was all that we
would pay or would be asked to pay Colombia,
and Colombia herself had advertised this fact.

306

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

The recommendation, therefore, was in effect
that we should go by Panama if we could acquire
our rights by paying $40,000,000 to the French
and $10,000,000 to the Colombians.

The French had real rights. They had spent
hundreds of millions of dollars, and although
much of this had been wasted, yet we received
at least $40,000,000 worth of property and of ac-
complished work for the $40,000,000 we agreed
to pay them. Colombia had no rights that were
not of the most shadowy and unsubstantial kind;
and even these shadowy rights existed only be-
cause of the action of the United States. She
had done nothing whatever except to misgovern
the Isthmus for fifty years. During these fifty
years her possession of the Isthmus as against
foreign powers had been maintained solely by the
guarantee and the potential strength of the
United States. The only effective policing of the
Isthmus during those fifty years had been done
by the United States on the frequent occasions
when it was forced to land marines and sailors
for that purpose. Ten million dollars repre-
sented the very outside limit which generosity
could fix as a payment to Colombia for rights
which she was impotent to maintain save by our
assistance and protection, and for an opportunity
which she was utterly unable herself to develop.
Nobody of any consequence in the United States,

307

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

within or without Congress, would at that time
for one moment have considered agreeing to pay
$25,000,000 or any sum remotely approaching it.

If Colombia had at that time announced any
such demand, unquestionably the Congress of
the United States would have directed the Execu-
tive to take the Nicaragua route. The exact
language of Congress in its Act providing for
the construction of the canal, approved June 28,
1902, was that if "the President be unable to
obtain for the United States a satisfactory title
to the property of the New Panama Canal Com-
pany and the control of the necessary territory of
the Republic of Colombia within a reasonable
time and upon reasonable terms, then the Presi-
dent" should endeavor to provide for a canal by
the Nicaragua route.

This language defined with exactness and pre-
cision what was to be done, and what as a matter
of fact I actually did. I was directed to take the
Nicaragua route, but only if within a reasonable
time I could not obtain control of the necessary
territory of the Republic of Colombia upon rea-
sonable terms ; the direction being explicit that if
I could not thus get the control within a reason-
able time and upon reasonable terms I must go
to Nicaragua. Colombia showed by its actions
that it was thoroughly acquainted with this fact,
and eagerly demanded and entered into a treaty

308

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

with the United States, the Hay-Herran treaty,
under which $10,000,000 was the price stipu-
lated to be paid in exchange for our acquiring
the right to the zone on which to build the canal.

Let it be remembered that this $10,000,000
was the price stipulated by Colombia herself as
payment to those in possession of the Isthmus,
and it was the price we actually did pay to those
who actually were in possession of the Isthmus.
The only difference was that, thanks to the most
just and proper revolution which freed Panama
from the intolerable oppression and wrongdoing
of Colombia, we were able to give this $10,000,-
ooo to the men who themselves dwelt on the Isth-
mus, instead of to alien taskmasters and oppres-
sors of theirs.

The proposal now is that after having paid
$10,000,000 to the rightful owners of the Isth-
mus we shall in addition pay $25,000,000 to their
former taskmasters and oppressors; a sum two
and a half times what, these tricky oppressors
originally asked, a sum which is to be paid to
them merely because they failed in carrying to
successful completion what must truthfully be
characterized as a bit of international villainy as
wicked as it was preposterous. In point of good
sense and sound morality, the proposal is exactly
on a par with paying a discomfited burglar a
heavy sum for the damage done his feelings by

3C9

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

detecting him and expelling him from the house.

Our people should also remember that what we
were paying for was the right to expend our
own money and our own labor to do a piece of
work which if left undone would render the
Isthmus of Panama utterly valueless. If we had
gone to Nicaragua, or had undertaken to build
a canal anywhere else across the Isthmus, then
the right which Colombia was so eager to sell
for $10,000,000 would not have been worth ten
cents. The whole value was created by our pros-
pective action; and this action was to be taken
wholly at our own expense and without making
Colombia or any one else pay a dollar, and this
although no power would benefit more by the
canal than Colombia, as it would give her water-
way communication by a short and almost direct
route between her Caribbean and Pacific ports.

The people of the United States should remem-
ber that the United States paid $50,000,000 to
Panama and the French company for every real
right of every sort or description which existed
on the Isthmus. There would have been no value
even to these rights unless for the action that the
United States then intended to take, and has
since actually taken. The property of the French
company would not have been worth any more
than any other scrap heap save for our subse-
quent action, and the right to cross the Isthmus

310

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

of Panama would have been valueless to Colom-
bia or to any other nation or body of men if we
had failed to build a canal across it and had built
one somewhere else. The whole value then and
now of any right upon that Isthmus depended
upon the fact that we then intended to spend and
now have spent in building the canal some $375,-
000,000.

The proposal of Mr. Wilson's Administration
is that, having given to the Isthmus of Panama
its whole present value by the expenditure of
$375,000,000, we shall now pay $25,000,000 ad-
ditional to the power that did its best to prevent
the Isthmus from having any value by treacher-
ously depriving us of the right to build the canal
at all, or to spend a dollar on the Isthmus. If
Colombia's action had been successful, the Isth-
mus would now be worthless; and yet the pres-
ent Administration actually proposes to pay her
$25,000,000 so as to atone to her for our not
having permitted her to follow a course of con-
duct which would have prevented the Isthmus
from being worth twenty-five cents.

Most people, when we began the building of
the canal, believed that we would fail. There
were plenty of such skeptics in this country, and
a much larger number abroad. If the American
engineers had not been successful, if the Ameri-
can people had not backed them with money, and

311

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

if the Government had not started the work on
a basis of absolutely non-partisan efficiency,
there would exist nothing for which to pay any
sum at the present moment. This proposed
treaty is a proposal to pay blackmail to that
Government which sought in vain to forbid us
to use our national efficiency in the interest of
the world at large.

I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact that
Panama represented to Colombia an asset of no
value whatsoever save such as might accrue from
the action which we were ready to undertake at
great expense. She enjoyed this asset at all only
because of our guaranteeing her against having
it taken away from her by any foreign power.
We had never guaranteed her against a move-
ment for independence on the Isthmus, or against
action on our own part if she misbehaved her-
self. Presidents and secretaries of state had
repeatedly given the true interpretation of the
obligations to New Granada (the South Ameri-
can republic which then included the present Re-
public of Colombia) by the treaty of 1846. In
1856 Secretary Cass officially stated the position
of the Government as follows :

Sovereignty has its duties as well as its

rights, and none of these local governments

(on the Isthmus) would be permitted in a

spirit of Eastern isolation to close the gates

312

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

of intercourse on the great highways of the
world, and justify the act by the pretension
that these avenues of trade and travel be-
long to them and that they choose to shut
them, or what is almost equivalent, to en-
cumber them with such unjust relations as
would prevent their general use.

Seven years later Secretary Seward in differ-
ent communications explicitly stated that the
United States had not undertaken any duty in
connection with "any question of internal revo-
lution in the state of Panama" but merely "to
protect the transit trade across the Isthmus
against invasion of either domestic or foreign
disturbers ;" and that the United States had not
"become bound to take sides in the domestic
broils of New Granada" but merely to protect
New Granada "as against other and foreign gov-
ernments." In the final portion of my message
to Congress of December 7, 1903, and in my
special message to Congress of January 4, 1904,
I enumerated a partial list of revolutions, insur-
rections, disturbances and other outbreaks that
had occurred on the Isthmus of Panama during
the fifty-three years preceding the negotiation of
our treaty with the Republic of Panama itself.
These revolutions, unsuccessful rebellions and
other outbreaks numbered just fifty-three during
these fifty-three years.

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

In detail they are as follows :

May 22, 1850. — Outbreak; two Americans
killed. War vessel demanded to quell outbreak.

October, 1850. — Revolutionary plot to brings
about independence of the Isthmus.

July 22, 1851. — Revolution in four southern
provinces.

November 14, 1851. — Outbreak at Chagres.
Man-of-war requested for Chagres.

June 27, 1853. — Insurrection at Bogota and
consequent disturbance on Isthmus. War vessel
demanded.

May 23, 1854. — Political disturbances. War
vessel requested.

June 28, 1854. — Attempted revolution.

October 24, 1854. — Independence of Isthmus
demanded by provincial legislature.

April, 1856. — Riot and massacre of Ameri-
cans.

May 4, 1856. — Riot.

May 18, 1856.— Riot.

June 3, 1856. — Riot.

October 2, 1856. — Conflict between two native
parties. United States forces landed.

December 18, 1858. — Attempted secession of
Panama.

April, 1859. — Riots.

September, 1860. — Outbreaks.
3*4

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

October 4, 1860. — Landing of United States
forces in consequence.

May 23, 1861. — Intervention of the United
States forces required by intendente.

October 2, 1861. — Insurrection and civil war.

April 4, 1862. — Measures to prevent rebels
crossing Isthmus.

June 13, 1862. — Mosquera's troops refused ad-
mittance to Panama.

March, 1865. — Revolution, and United States
troops landed.

August, 1865. — Riots; unsuccessful attempt to
invade Panama.

March, 1866. — Unsuccessful revolution.

April, 1867. — Attempt to overthrow Govern-
ment.

August, 1867. — Attempt at revolution.

July 5, 1868. — Revolution; provisional govern-
ment inaugurated.

August 29, 1868. — Revolution; provisional
government overthrown.

April, 1871. — Revolution; followed apparently
by counter revolution.

April, 1873. — Revolution and civil war which
lasted to October, 1875.

August, 1876. — Civil war which lasted until
April, 1877.

July, 1878.— Rebellion.

December, 1878. — Revolt.

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

April, 1879. — Revolution.

June, 1879. — Revolution.

March, 1883.— Riot.

May, 1883.— Riot.

June, 1884. — Revolutionary attempt.

December, 1884. — Revolutionary attempt.

January, 1885. — Revolutionary disturbances.

March, 1885. — Revolution.

April, 1887. — Disturbance on Panama Rail-
road.

November, 1887. — Disturbance on line of
canal.

January, 1889. — Riot.

January, 1895. — Revolution which lasted until
April.

March, 1895. — Incendiary attempt.

October, 1899. — Revolution.

February, 1900, to July, 1900. — Revolution.

January, 1901. — Revolution.

July, 1901. — Revolutionary disturbances.

September, 1901. — City of Colon taken by
rebels.

March, 1902. — Revolutionary disturbances.

July, 1902. — Revolution.

Colombia had shown herself utterly incapable
of keeping order on the Isthmus. Only the ac-
tive interference of the United States had en-
abled her to preserve so much as a semblance of
sovereignty. In 1856, in 1860, and in 1873, in

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THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

1885, in 1901, and in 1902, sailors and marines
from United States warships were forced to land
in order to protect life and property and to see
that the transit across the Isthmus was kept open.
In 1 86 1, in 1862, in 1885, and in 1900, the Colom-
bia Government asked for the landing of troops
by the United States Government to protect its
interests and to maintain order on the Isthmus.
Immediately after the revolution by which Pan-
ama obtained its independence in 1903, the Co-
lombian Government made another request to
land troops to preserve Colombian sovereignty.

This request was made through General Reyes,
afterward President of the republic. President
Marroquin in making the request offered if we
would grant it, to "approve by decree" the rati-
fication of the Hay-Herran canal treaty as
signed, acting thus "by virtue of vested consti-
tutional authority," or if the Government of the
United States preferred, to call an extra session
of Congress "with new and friendly members"
to approve the treaty.

This dispatch has an especial interest. In the
first place, it requested the United States to re-
store order and secure Colombia supremacy on
the very Isthmus from which the Colombian
Government had just decided to bar us by pre-
venting the construction of the canal. In the
second place, by the offer made it showed that the

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

constitutional objections which had been urged
against ratifying the treaty were obviously not
made in good faith, and that the Government
which made the treaty really had absolute con-
trol over its ratification, but chose to exercise
that control adversely to us. As a matter of
fact, whatever duty we had in the peninsula was
to the Panamanians and not to the Colombians at
all. As John Hay put it, "the covenant ran with
the land." Our original treaty was with the
United States of New Granada. This body suf-
fered various changes, various portions splitting
off and sometimes rejoining, and finally the Re-
public of Colombia succeeded to most of it. We,
however, recognized whatever power was in law-
ful possession of the Isthmus, as the successor
of the one with which we had made the treaty.

In the constitutions of 1858 and 1861, Panama
explicitly reserved the right to 'secede from the
confederation and to nullify any act inconsistent
with its own "autonomy." Colombia later pub-
lished a new constitution by Executive Decree,
reducing Panama to the condition of a crown
colony; but Panama never accepted this action
as proper, and when in 1903 it set up an inde-
pendent government by unanimous action of her
citizens, they were merely reasserting the con-
stitutional and legal rights which they had never
relinquished.

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

As Secretary Root wrote the Colombian Min-
ister in 1906, our action in recognizing the inde-
pendence of Panama was merely "a recognition
of the just rights of the people of Panama." On
technical grounds Panama's case was clear, Co-
lombia had no case whatever, and the United
States was bound to act as she did act. Morally,
of course, there is no question whatever that
Panama's action was imperatively demanded and
that the United States would have been guilty
of culpable misconduct toward an oppressed peo-
ple if she had failed to support Panama.

I wish to emphasize the nature of the Colom-
bian Government at the time when Panama de-
clared her independence. It was a pure dictator-
ship. This was no concern of ours; for I hold
it is not our affair to say to another nation what
kind of government it shall have save in so far
as the rights of our own citizens or of our own
Government are concerned. The then Presi-
dent, Mr. Marroquin, had been elected as vice-
president. Soon after his inauguration by a coup
d'etat he unseated the President and put him in
prison. He then announced that under the Con-
stitution, in the absence of the President, the
vice-president wielded all the executive powers.
Accordingly he exercised them.

In a few months the absence of the President
became permanent, for he opportunely died in

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

prison, and Mr. Marroquin continued to act as
President. He declined to call Congress together
for a period in the neighborhood of five years,
and announced that under the Constitution in
the absence of Congress he possessed all the leg-
islative functions. Accordingly he exercised
these also. He was careful to explain that his
course was entirely "constitutional" and that it
was in accordance with the mandate of the Con-
stitution that he who had been elected vice-presi-
dent exercised all the functions both of Presi-
dent and of Congress. As a matter of fact, while
he did not permit any elections to take place for
a number of years, yet his power was so absolute
that he elected whomever he wished as soon as
the election did take place ; as already related, he
notified me, when it became to his interest to do
so, that he would elect a Congress with a guar-
antee that it would perform what he desired in
case I would be satisfied therewith.

Having this absolute power not only to initiate
but to ratify and carry out any treaty, he, through
Mr. Herran, negotiated with Mr. Hay a treaty
with the United States Government which con-
ceded us the right to take the Panama Canal zone
and build the canal for the sum of $10,000,000.
(I disregard the minor details of the treaty.)
He was exceedingly anxious to negotiate this
treaty because it was a matter vital to Panama,

320

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

and therefore of concern to the absentee owners
of Panama ; for if the treaty were not negotiated
it was certain that the United States would go
to Nicaragua. Having this treaty, and having
received from the French company the assurance
that they would sell us that property for
$40,000,000, we selected the Panama route. As
soon as we had done this Mr. Marroquin and his
associates concluded that we were hopelessly com-
mitted, and that it was safe for him to repudiate
his promise and try to extort more money. Un-
der its original contract the time during which
the French company had to complete the canal
lapsed the following year. Colombia had
granted an extension of some years; but Mr.
Marroquin and his associates now announced
that this extension of time, which they had them-
selves given, was unconstitutional.

Again I wish to call attention to the solemn
farce, the contemptible farce, of these men ap-
pealing to the Constitution as a make-believe
fetish, when the entire governmental power of
the nation was vested at the moment in an irre-
sponsible dictator who had never been elected to
the office of President at all, who refused to sum-
mon Congress, and who yet exercised all its pow-
ers in the absence of Congress. It was dishonest
on their part thus to talk of the Constitution, and

321

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PARTQ

it is an act of unspeakable silliness for any of our
people to take that talk seriously.

Accordingly Marroquin summoned a Con-
gress, the only one that had been held under his
Administration. It was an absolutely obsequious
body. It did not attempt to pass a law, or do
anything but repudiate the proposed treaty. Its
committee, in the report which the Congress
adopted, announced the real object of their ac-
tion when it said that the following year the
rights of the French company would lapse and
Colombia would take possession of the French
company's belongings, and then would be in a
"more advantageous" position to negotiate with
the United States. In other words, they expected
to combine piracy with blackmail, and to take
possession of the French company's belongings
and get from us the $40,000,000 we were to pay
the French. Of course France would never have
allowed this, and if I had acted with the pliant
submission to Colombia's demand which the pres-
ent Administration is at this moment showing,
we would have had on the Isthmus France in-
stead of Colombia, and the difficulty and danger
of the whole problem would have been infinitely
increased.

The Congress as well as the Dictator had am-
ple warning of all the dangers they by their ac-
tion were inviting. Representatives from Pan-

322

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

ama warned the Colombian Administration that
Panama would revolt if the treaty was rejected;
and our Department of State in the gravest man-
ner called their attention to the serious situation
their conduct would create.

Our Minister, Mr. Beaupre, an admirable pub-
lic servant, who — unlike his successor who nego-
tiated the preposterous treaty now before the
Senate — conceived himself under obligation
faithfully to represent the interests of the Amer-
ican people, encountered great difficulties while
endeavoring to perform his duties at this time.
The State Department's messages to him were
intercepted, and in several cases not delivered,
as shown in his cable to Hay of August 6, 1903 ;
and he was directed by the Department of State
to protest against such interference with his of-
ficial communications. Mr. Beaupre showed con-
clusively in his correspondence that the delay in
dealing with the Panama Canal treaty by Colom-
bia was for the purpose of wringing money from
either the French company or the United States,
or both.

For example, in his message of June 10, 1903,
he stated that the local agent of the Panama Ca-
nal Company had informed him that he had re-
ceived an official note from the Colombian Gov-
ernment stating that the treaty would be rejected
unless the French company paid Colombia

323

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

$10,000,000. This shows that the Colombian
Government then expected only twenty millions
all told — ten legitimately from us and ten as an
extorted bribe from the unfortunate French com-
pany. President Wilson now proposes to give
five millions extra, apparently to soothe the feel-
ings of those who failed to extort a smaller sum
by scandalously improper methods.

In his message of July 21, Minister Beaupre
reported that the Colombian Government had
sounded both Germany and England to see if they
could not be persuaded to construct, or aid in the
construction of, the canal in place of the United
States. The Government of Colombia, there-
fore, not only sought to blackmail us and to
blackmail the French company, but endeavored
to put one of the great Old World powers on the
Isthmus in possession of the canal. And because
the then Administration refused to submit to
such infamy on the part of Colombia, the pres-
ent Administration actually proposes to pay the
wrongdoer $25,000,000 of blackmail.

There are in every great country a few men
whose mental or moral make-up is such that they
always try to smirch their own people, and some-
times go to the length of moral treason in the
effort to discredit their own national government.
A campaign of mendacity was started against
this treaty from the outset by certain public men

324

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

and certain newspapers. One of the favorite
assertions of these men and newspapers was that
the United States Government had in some way
or other instigated, and through its agents been
privy to, the revolutionary movement on the Isth-
mus. The statement is a deliberate falsehood,
and every man who makes it knows that it is a
falsehood. Mr. H. A. Gudger, late Chief Judge
of the Department of Panama, was consul in
Panama at the time, and had been consul for
six years previously. It was impossible for any
such encouragement or aid by the United States
Government of the revolutionary movement to
have occurred without his knowledge, and he has
explicitly stated that he did not know of any
such encouragement.

Mr. Hay, on behalf of the State Department,
made an exactly similar statement to me at the
same time. I repeated the statement in my mes-
sage to Congress. The simple truth, as every-
body with any knowledge knew at the time, was
that the Isthmus was seething with revolution,
and that a revolution was certain to occur if the
treaty were rejected. Minister Beaupre notified
us that the Panama delegates in the Congress
during the debates about the treaty, had in-
formed the Congress explicitly that such would
be the case. The newspapers of the United States
repeatedly published news from Panama stating

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

that such revolutions were impending. Quota-
tions from the daily papers could be multiplied
to prove this. It is only necessary to refer to the
Washington Post of August 31 and of Septem-
ber i, the New York Herald of September 10, the
New York Times of September 13, the New York
Herald of October 26, the Washington Post of
October 29, the New York Herald of October 30
and of November 2 ; all of the year 1903.

In my special message to Congress of January
4, 1904, 1 described the report made to me at the
request of Lieutenant-General Young by Captain
Humphrey and Lieutenant Murphy of the Army,
who in the course of a visit which on their own
initiative (and without my knowledge) they had
made to Panama, had discovered that various
revolutionary movements were being inaugu-
rated, and that a revolution would certainly
occur, possibly immediately after the closing of
the Colombian Congress at the end of October,
but probably not before early November. This
definitely localized the probability of the revo-
lution taking place somewhere during the last
ten days of October, or the first week in No-
vember. This was known on the Isthmus. It
was known to the American newspapers. It was
also known at Bogota, where measures were
taken to meet the situation. If it had not been
known to the President and to the Secretary of

326

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

State, they would have shown themselves culp-
ably unfit for their positions.

After my interview with the army officers
named, on October 16 I directed the Navy De-
partment to issue instructions to send ships to the
Isthmus so as to protect American interests and
the lives of American citizens if a revolutionary
outbreak should occur. Most fortunately the
United States steamer Nashville, under Com-
mander Hubbard, in consequence of these orders,
reached the Isthmus just in time to prevent a
bloody massacre of American men, women and
children. Troops from Bogota had already been
landed in Colon on November 3, when the revo-
lution broke out on the same day. On November
4, as Commander Hubbard officially reported, his
marines were landed, in view of the fact that the
American Consul had been notified by the officer
commanding the Colombia troops that he in-
tended to open fire on the town of Colon at 2
p. m. and kill every United States citizen in the
place. Accordingly various men, women and
children took refuge first in the shed of the Pan-
ama Railway Company, and then on a German
steamer and a Panama Railway steamer which
were at the dock. Commander Hubbard showed
himself loyal to the best traditions of the Ameri-
can Navy. He brought the Nashville close up to
the water-front, landed some of his men to gar-

327

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

risen the shed of the Panama Railway Company,
and although the Colombians outnumbered him
ten to one, succeeded in protecting the lives of the
American citizens who were menaced. Thanks
to the firmness of himself and his men, he so im-
pressed the Colombian commander that next day
the latter reembarked and withdrew with his
troops to Colombia.

So far from there having been too much fore-
sight about the revolution on the part of the
American Government, this plain official account
by a naval officer of what occurred on November
4 showed that the American Government had, if
anything, delayed too long its orders for the
movement of American warships to Panama, and
that it was only the coolness and gallantry of
forty-two marines and sailors in the face of ten
times their number of armed foes that prevented
the carrying out of the atrocious threat of the
Colombian commander. In accordance with our
settled principles of conduct we refused to allow
the transportation of troops across the Isthmus
by either the Colombians or the Panamanians,
so as to prevent bloodshed and interference with
traffic.

No one connected with this Government had
any part in preparing, inciting or encouraging
the revolution on the Isthmus of Panama. Save
from the reports of our military and naval offi-

328

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

cers given in full in the message of the President
to the Senate, and from the official reports in the
Department of State, no one connected with the
Government had any previous knowledge of the
revolution except such as was accessible to any
person of ordinary intelligence who read the
newspapers and kept up a current acquaintance
with public affairs.

Secretary of State John Hay stated officially
at the time :

The action of the President in the
Panama matter is not only in the strictest
accordance with the best precedents of our
public policy, but it was the only course he
could have taken in compliance with our
treaty rights and obligations.

I saw at the time very many men, Americans,
natives of Panama, and Europeans, all of whom
told me that they believed a revolution was im-
pending, and most of whom asked me to take
sides one way or the other. The most noted of
these men whom I now recollect seeing was Mr.
Bunau-Varilla. He, however, did not ask me to
take sides one way or the other. To no one of
these men did I give any private assurance of any
kind one way or the other, referring them simply
to my published declarations and acts.

For some reason certain newspapers have re-
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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

peatedly stated that Mr. Nelson Cromwell was
responsible for the revolution. I do not remem-
ber whether Mr. Nelson Cromwell was or was
not among my callers during the months immedi-
ately preceding the revolution. But if he was I
certainly did not discuss with him anything con-
nected with the revolution. I do not remember
his ever speaking to me about the revolution until
after it occurred, and my understanding was,
and is, that he had nothing whatever to do with
the revolutionary movement which actually took
place.

There were, as I have said, various revolution-
ary movements on foot in the Isthmus, and it was
my understanding that there was considerable
jealousy among the instigators of these move-
ments as to which one would come off first and
would be effective. On information received af-
ter the event, I believed then, and believe now,
that the revolutionary movement which actually
succeeded was the one with which Mr. Bunau-
Varilla was connected. He was sent by the Gov-
ernment of Panama as Minister to this country
as soon as Panama became an independent state,
and he then made no secret of the fact that he
had been one of those who had organized the suc-
cessful revolution; precisely as was the case with
the President and other officials of the new re-
public. Neither did Mr. Bunau-Varilla make

330

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

any secret of the fact that in acting as he did he
was influenced both by his indignation as a resi-
dent of Panama at the Colombian treatment of
Panama, and also by his indignation as a French-
man at the Colombian proposal to blackmail the
company, and if it would not submit to black-
mail, then to confiscate its possessions.

In view of this double attitude of the Colom-
bian Government, an attitude of tyranny toward
Panama and of robbery toward the French com-
pany, Mr. Bunau-Varilla conceived it to be his
duty to do all he could to aid the natives of Pan-
ama in throwing off the yoke of Colombia. I
believe his attitude was entirely proper, alike
from the standpoint of his duty as a resident of
Panama, from the standpoint of his duty as a
Frenchman to the investors and property holders
of the French company, and from the standpoint
of his duty as a citizen of the world. But until
after the event I had no knowledge of his activi-
ties save the knowledge possessed by all intelli-
gent men who had studied the affairs of the Isth-
mus. I gave him no aid or encouragement. My
attitude was open to the knowledge of all; it was
set forth with minute accuracy in my message to
Congress.

No one connected with the American Govern-
ment instigated the revolution. I thought that a
revolution might very probably occur, but so far

331

PEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

from fomenting it I was at the time, as has re-
peatedly been made public since, preparing my
message on the basis that it would be necessary
for us openly to take possession of the Isthmus
in view of the scandalous conduct of Colombia.
However, the fact that the revolution occurred
and that the independent republic of Panama was
actually seated on the Isthmus, rendered it un-
necessary for me to send in this original draft of
my message.

Even had I desired to foment a revolution —
which I did not — it would have been wholly un-
necessary for me to do so. The Isthmus was
seething with revolution. Any interference from
me would have had to take the shape of prevent-
ing a revolution, not of creating one. All the
people residing on the Isthmus ardently desired
the revolution. The citizens of Panama desired
it. Every municipal council, every governmental
body the citizens themselves could elect or con-
trol, demanded and supported it. When the rev-
olution had occurred, and was successful, and
Panama was an independent republic, I certainly
did prevent Colombia from carrying on a bloody
war on the Isthmus in the effort to overthrow the
revolutionists. I certainly did refuse to do what
Colombia requested, that is, to use the Army and
Navy of the United States against our friends in
the interests of the foes who had just been trying

332

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

to blackmail us. We were solemnly pledged to
keep transit across the Isthmus open. Again and
again we had landed forces in time of revolu-
tionary disturbance to secure this object. If Co-
lombia had attempted the reconquest of the Isth-
mus, there would have been a far more bloody
contest than ever before on the Isthmus, and the
only way by which that contest could have been
carried on would have been by using the railroad
line and interrupting transit across the Isthmus.

It is therefore perfectly true that I prevented
any attempt by Colombia to land troops on the
Isthmus and plunge the Isthmus into a long
drawn-out and bloody war. What I did then
was as plainly my duty as it would be the duty of
the President to act in a similar manner now.
Panama was an independent republic de facto
then just as she is now. Colombia had not a
particle more right to land troops and conquer
her then than she has now. If I was wrong in
preventing Colombia from making an effort by
a long drawn-out and bloody war to reconquer
the Isthmus in 1903, then it would be a wrong
to prevent her from making a similar effort at
reconquest now.

If Mr. Wilson is sincere in his criticism of me
for preventing such a war of reconquest in 1903,
it is his duty to permit Colombia unhampered
to make the reconquest at this moment; and

333

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

to advocate one course of action is not one whit
more immoral than to advocate the other.
This Administration pretends to be for "peace."
My course has brought twelve years of abso-
lute peace to the Isthmus, for the first time
in its history, and any other course would have
plunged it into bloodshed. The Administration
stands for a make-believe peace of cowardice. I
stand for what I then secured : the real and last-
ing peace of honor and justice.

Among the provisions in the present proposed
treaty with Colombia is the following phrase :

The Republic of Colombia shall be at lib-
erty at all times to transport through the
interoceanic canal its troops, materials of
war, and ships of war, even in case of war
between Colombia and another country,
without paying any charges to the United
States.

To grant such a right to both Colombia and
Panama was permissible so long as we also in-
sisted on exercising it ourselves, on the grounds
set forth by the then Secretary of State, Mr. Root,
in his note to the British Government of January
1 6, 1909. In this note Secretary Root took the
ground that the United States had the right to
except from "coming within any schedule of tolls
which might thereafter be established" the ships

334

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

of the powers entering into the agreement neces-
sary in order to give title to the land through
which the canal was to be built, and to authorize
its construction and the necessary jurisdiction or
control over it when built. These nations were
Panama, Colombia and the United States. Since
then the present Administration has surrendered
the right so far as the United States is concerned ;
and yet it proposes to give to the most enven-
omed opponent of the building of the canal rights
to its use which are denied to the power giving
the rights. In other words, the Administration
says that our people, who built the canal, can give
to others rights which they dare not themselves
exercise. Such a position is a wicked absurdity.
Moreover, the proposed treaty may be con-
strued under certain conditions to give Colombia
the right to use the canal in a war against Pan-
ama, and we could only prevent such an outrage
by breaking faith. We have already guaranteed
the independence of Panama against Colombia
by a solemn treaty. The Administration now
proposes to guarantee to Colombia the right to
use the canal against Panama. The two con-
flicting guarantees could not both be observed.
Doubtless in the event of such conflict the United
States would refuse to allow Colombia the rights
which the proposed treaty would grant her; and
in that case another and far greater grievance

335

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

would be committed against Colombia; and then
some future Administration, if it possessed the
present Administration's nervous amiability to-
ward all nations hostile to America, might agree
to pay a hundred millions, with a suitable apol-
ogy, as atonement for the conduct of its prede-
cessor.

It may seem as if I am discussing the future
possible actions of American Administrations
ironically. I am really discussing them quite seri-
ously. If the proposed treaty is ratified, it will
render it quite impossible to consider any treaty
as beyond the realm of probability. It had never
entered my head that President Wilson could do
what he proposes to do in connection with the
proposed treaty with Colombia. If we pay
$25,000,000 to Colombia now, then there is no
reason why we should not at some future time
pay her another $100,000,000; or pay Mexico ten
times that sum for having taken Texas and Cali-
fornia, Arizona and New Mexico ; or pay a hun-
dred times that sum to Great Britain because our
ancestors deprived her of the thirteen colonies.

The Administration has succeeded in getting
Congress to take the position that the United
States has no special rights in its own canal. It
now proposes by treaty to get Congress to give
to the one nation which conspicuously wronged
us in connection with that canal special rights

336

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

which it would deny to ourselves and to all other
countries. President Wilson denies that we have
the right to exempt our own vessels engaged in
peaceful coast commerce from tolls, and yet he
now proposes to exempt from tolls the war ves-
sels and transports of Colombia. Three years
ago I should have deemed it impossible that two
such propositions could have been entertained by
the same Administration. Furthermore, the
President, through the Secretary of State, has re-
cently stated that "if cordial relations are to be
restored to Colombia, they must be restored on a
basis that is satisfactory to Colombia." On the
contrary, I take the position that the basis should
be one of justice and right, and therefore one sat-
isfactory to the honor and dignity of the United
States Government and of the American people.
The Administration's attitude is precisely as if
when a householder has a disagreement with a
burglar the effort should be to restore "peace"
upon a basis satisfactory to the burglar instead
of to the householder. Any burglar will wel-
come the "peace" which comes if the householder
tenders him a large sum of money to atone for
the heartlessness of a former occupant of the
house in preventing him from getting away with
the loose silver.

Mr. Bryan has also stated that Colombia suf-
fered a loss financially, which we ought to make

337

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

up, when she lost Panama. This represents the
doctrine that when one country holds another in
subjection and by misgovernment drives it to re-
volt, the moral and equitable rights are on the
side of the tyrant country and not on the country
that has declared its independence. If Mr. Bryan
is right in his theory, France owes Great Britain
an enormous sum of money for its misconduct in
assisting the revolted colonies to become the
United States of America. Yet the misgovern-
ment of the colonies by Great Britain against
which the colonies revolted did not even remotely
approach the misgovernment against which Pan-
ama revolted; and it would not be more absurd
for President Wilson to take the position that
France owes Great Britain an enormous sum of
money for her conduct in the Revolutionary War
than to take the position which is now taken in
reference to the payment of this $25,000,000 of
sheer blackmail to Colombia.

We have at different times paid sums of money
to various nations for the acquisition of territory
from them. We have paid money to Russia and
to France. We have paid money to Spain. But
we have never paid to any nation, not to the most
powerful European nation, nor to any American
nation, a sum of money equal to the sum which
it is now proposed to pay to Colombia in tender-
ing her an apology for having refused to permit

33*

THE PANAMA BLACKMAIL TREATY

her to reconquer a little people whom she had
shamelessly oppressed, and for having acquired
the right which she sought to deny us, the right
to spend hundreds of millions of our own money
in constructing a canal in our own interest, in
her interest, and in the interest of all the civi-
lized powers of the world.

As Mr. Bonaparte, late Attorney-General, has
said:

By the treaty we promise to pay Colom-
bia, as a compensation for an alleged injury,
a much larger sum of money than we paid
France for Louisiana, or Mexico for Cali-
fornia, or Spain for the Philippines, or
Panama for the Canal Zone, or than Great
Britain paid us in settlement of the Alabama
claims; if we acknowledge that we have so
wronged her as as to make it proper for us
to buy her forgiveness, it is consistent and
appropriate to add to this acknowledgment
of wrong an apology, or, in other words,
an expression of sorrow ; if we have nothing
to apologize for, because we have done her
no wrong, then it is utterly unworthy of a
great nation and a forfeiture of our right
to self-respect for us to pay her a red cent.

The proposed treaty is a crime against the
United States. It is an attack upon the honor
of the United States which if justified would con-
vict the United States of infamy. It is a menace

339

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

to the future well-being of our people. Either
there is or there is not warrant for paying this
enormous sum and for making the apology. If
there is no warrant for it — and of course not the
slightest vestige of warrant exists — then the pay-
ment is simply the payment of belated blackmail.
If there is warrant for it, then we have no busi-
ness to be on the Isthmus at all. The payment
can only be justified upon the ground that this
nation has played the part of a thief, or of a re-
ceiver of stolen goods. In such a case it would
be a crime to remain on the Isthmus, and it is
much worse than an absurdity for the President,
who wishes to pay the $25,000,000, to take part
in opening the canal ; for if the President and the
Secretary of State are justified in paying the
$25,000,000, it is proof positive that in opening
the canal they are in their own opinion engaged
in the dedication of stolen goods.

To recapitulate:

i. The land could not have been acquired and
the canal could not have been built save by tak-
ing precisely and exactly the action which was
taken. Unless the nation is prepared heartily to
indorse and stand by this action, it has no right
to take any pride in anything that has been done
on the Isthmus and it has no right to remain on
the Isthmus. If there is a moral justification for
paying Colombia $25,000,000, then there is no

340

moral justification for our staying on the Isth-
mus at all and we should promptly get off. If
President Wilson is right in his position, then he
has no business to take part in any ceremony
connected with opening the canal; on his theory
he would be engaged in the dedication of stolen
goods.

2. In the words of John Hay, "the covenant
ran with the land." Our agreement was with the
power which owned the Isthmus of Panama,
whether this was New Granada or Colombia or
Panama itself. This agreement guaranteed the
state that was in control of the Isthmus against
interference by foreign powers, but it imposed
no responsibility upon us as regards internecine
troubles. This was explicitly set forth in state-
ments by Secretaries Cass and Seward, one a
Democrat and one a Republican.

As a matter of fact, every action we took was
not only open and straightforward, but was ren-
dered absolutely necessary by the misconduct of
Colombia.. Every action we took was in accord-
ance with the highest principles of national, in-
ternational, and private morality. The honor
of the United States, and the interest not only of
the United States but of the world, demanded
the building of the canal. The canal could not
have been built, it would not now have been be-
gun, had our Government not acted precisely as

PEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

it did act in 1903. No action ever taken by the
Government, in dealing with any foreign power
since the days of the Revolution, was more vi-
tally necessary to the well-being of our people,
and no action we ever took was taken with a
higher regard for the standards of honor, of
courage, and of efficiency which should distin-
guish the attitude of the United States in all its
dealings with the rest of the world.

342

CHAPTER XII

CONCLUSION

FEAR God and take your own part ! This is
another way of saying that a nation must
have power and will for self-sacrifice and also
power and will for self -protection. There must
be both unselfishness and self-expression, each to
supplement the other, neither wholly good with-
out the other. The nation must be willing to
stand disinterestedly for a lofty, ideal and yet it
must also be able to insist that its own rights be
heeded by others. Evil will come if it does not
possess the will and the power for unselfish action
on behalf of non-utilitarian ideals and also the
will and the power for self-mastery, self-control,
self-discipline. It must possess those high and
stern qualities of soul which will enable it to
conquer softness and weakness and timidity and
train itself to subordinate momentary pleasure,
momentary profit, momentary safety to the larger
future.

There is not the slightest use of saying any of
this unless we are willing and able to translate
our speech into action. National unselfishness

343

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

and self-sacrifice must be an affair of deeds. To
utter lofty sentiments on the subject, to indulge
in oratory about it, to write notes about it, and
then when the occasion arises not to act in ac-
cordance with these sentiments, means moral
degradation for the nation. Oratorical insincer-
ity of this kind is nauseating to all honest men.
Prolonged indulgence in this kind of emotional
insincerity eats into the moral fiber of the people
like a corrosive acid.

In the spring of 1910 at Christiania before the
Nobel Prize Committee, in acknowledging the
receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, I outlined the
plan for securing international peace by means of
an international league pledged to put force back
of it, the plan which I elaborated in the volume
published over a year ago called "America and
the World War." But it is a sham and a mock-
ery to advocate such a plan until and unless we
in the first place make it evident that when we
give a promise we mean to keep it, and in the
next place make it evident that we are willing to
show the courage, the resolution, the forethought
in training and preparation that will enable us to
put strength behind our promise. I believe in
nationalism as the absolute pre-requisite to inter-
nationalism. I believe in patriotism as the abso-
lute pre-requisite to the larger Americanism. I
believe in Americanism because unless our people

344

CONCLUSION

are good Americans first, America can accom-
plish little or nothing worth accomplishing for
the good of the world as a whole.

But none of these objects can be attained by
merely talking about them. National unselfish-
ness and self-sacrifice, national self-mastery, and
the development of national power, can never be
achieved by words alone. National unselfishness
— which is another way of saying service ren-
dered to internationalism — can become effective
only if the nation is willing to sacrifice some-
thing, is willing to face risk and effort and endure
hardship in order to render service. The tower-
ing idealism of Lincoln's Gettysburg speech and
second inaugural counted only because it repre-
sented the labor and effort and willingness to
face death and eager pride in fighting for ideals,
which marked a mighty people led by a mighty
leader.

We of America, thanks to the failure of Presi-
dent Wilson's Administration to do its duty,
have ourselves failed to serve the cause of inter-
nationalism as it was our bounden duty to serve
it by standing efficiently for heroic Belgium
when, under the lead of their heroic King and
Queen, the Belgian people chose to tread the hard
path of national suffering and honor rather than
the easy path which led through fields of safety
and disgrace. The Belgians have walked through

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the valley of the shadow rather than prove false
to their ideals. We, rich, prosperous, at ease,
and potentially powerful, have not lifted a finger
to right their wrongs, lest our own safety and
comfort might be jeopardized. This represents
on our part neither readiness for national self-
sacrifice, nor appreciation of true international-
ism. It represents the gross selfishness which
puts material well-being above fealty to a high
ideal.

This national selfishness, manifested under the
lead of President Wilson and Secretary Bryan,
was doubly offensive because it was loudly trum-
peted as a virtue. One of our besetting sins as a
nation has been to encourage in our public serv-
ants, in our speech-making leaders of all kinds,
the preaching of impossible ideals; and then to
treat this as offsetting the fact that in practice
these representatives did not live up to any ideals
whatever. The vital need is that we as a nation
shall say what we mean and shall make our public
servants say what they mean ; say it to other na-
tions and say it to us, ourselves. Let us demand
that we and they preach realizable ideals and that
we and they live up to the ideals thus preached.
Let there be no impassable gulf between exuber-
ance of impossible promise and pitiful insuffi-
ciency in quality of possible performance.

Belgium is the test of just how much our pub-
346

CONCLUSION

lie servants and our professional humanitarians
mean when they speak in favor of high ideals
and lofty international morality. If we clamor
for peace without saying that Belgium's wrongs
are to be righted before peace can properly come,
we are false to every true standard of interna-
tional morality. If we are not willing to encoun-
ter hazard and the risk of loss and the need of
effort in order to help Belgium, then we show
ourselves unfit to talk about internationalism.

But this is not all. It is odious hypocrisy to
do as this Administration has done and refuse to
stand for the rights of neutrals when, as in the
case of Belgium, these rights were most fla-
grantly trodden under foot, but when we had no
pecuniary interest involved ; and yet promptly to
clamor on behalf of the rights of neutrals when
the exercise of these rights would redound to our
own pecuniary advantage. This is to put the
body above the soul, the dollar above the man.
Moreover, when we thus, in the first and greatest
case of the violation of neutral rights, flinched
from our duty, we rendered it impossible with
effect or indeed with propriety to protest about
subsequent and lesser violations of neutral rights.
With colossal effrontery Germany, the first and
infinitely the greatest offender against humanity
and the rights of neutrals, has clamored that
we should take steps to "secure neutral rights on

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

the seas," to "establish the freedom of the seas,"
"to secure the neutralization of the ocean." The
pro-Germans on this side of the water have re-
peated these words with parrot-like fidelity of
phrase. In the first place, all offences against
the freedom of the seas that have been perpe-
trated in this war are unimportant compared
with the infamy committed on Belgium — save
only those offences committed by the German and
Austrian submarines, which resulted in the mur-
der of over two thousand non-combatants. In
the next place, until the civilized world which is
at peace, and more especially the United States,
in some way takes effective action to rebuke the
violation by Germany of the neutralized territory
of Belgium, it is utterly useless to talk about the
neutralization of the seas. If the United States
had promptly and effectively interfered on behalf
of Belgium, it would have been its clear duty to
interfere against all the nations who on sea or on
shore have subsequently been guilty of violations
of international law and of the rules laid down in
The Hague Conventions, the Geneva Convention
and other similar conventions. But until the first
duty has been efficiently performed and the major
offender dealt with, it is a proof of cowardice
and of bad faith to deal with minor offences.

Let us be true to our democratic ideal, not by
the utterance of cheap platitudes, not by windy

348

CONCLUSION

oratory, but by living our lives in such manner
as to show that democracy can be efficient in
promoting the public welfare during periods of
peace and efficient in securing national freedom
in time of war. If a free government cannot or-
ganize and maintain armies and navies which
can and will fight as well as those of an autocracy
or a despotism, it will not survive. We must have
a first-class navy and a first-class professional
army. We must also secure universal and obliga-
tory military training for all our young men.
Our democracy must prove itself effective in
making the people healthy, strong and industri-
ally productive, in securing justice, in inspiring
intense patriotism and in making every man and
woman within our borders realize that if they are
not willing at time of need to serve the nation
against all comers in war, they are not fit to be
citizens of the nation in time of peace. The
democratic ideal must be that of subordinating
chaos to order, of subordinating the individual to
the community, of subordinating individual self-
ishness to collective self-sacrifice for a lofty ideal,
of training every man to realize that no one is
entitled to citizenship in a great free common-
wealth unless he does his full duty to his neigh-
bor, his full duty in his family life, and his full
duty to the nation ; and unless he is prepared to
do this duty not only in time of peace but also in

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time of war. It is by no means necessary that a
great nation should always stand at the heroic
level. But no nation has the root of greatness
in it unless in time of need it can rise to the heroic
mood.

35°

. APPENDIX A

MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS

On the ninth of May, 1915, two days after the
Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by a Ger-
man submarine, I made the following statement in
the press: —

THE German submarines have established no ef-
fective blockade of the British and French coast
lines. They have endeavored to prevent the access of
French, British and neutral ships to Britain and France
by attacks upon them which defy every principle of in-
ternational law as laid down in innumerable existing
treaties, including The Hague Conventions. Many of
these attacks have represented pure piracy; and not
a few of them have been accompanied by murder on
an extended scale. In the case of the Lusitania the scale
was so vast that the murder became wholesale.

A number of American ships had already been tor-
pedoed in similar fashion. In two cases American lives
were lost. When the Lusitania sank some twelve hun-
dred non-combatants, men, women and children, were
drowned, and more than a hundred of these were Ameri-
cans. Centuries have passed since any war vessel of
a civilized power has shown such ruthless brutality
toward non-combatants, and especially toward women
and children. The Moslem pirates of the Barbary Coast
behaved at times in similar fashion, until the civilized

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

nations joined in suppressing them ; and the other pirates
who were outcasts from among these civilized nations
also at one time perpetrated similar deeds, until they
were sunk or hung. But none of these old-time pirates
committed murder on so vast a scale as in the case of the
Lusitania.

The day after the tragedy the newspapers reported
in one column that in Queenstown there lay by the score
the bodies of women and children, some of the dead
women still clasping the bodies of the little children
they held in their arms when death overwhelmed them.
In another column they reported the glee expressed
by the Berlin journals at this "great victory of German
naval policy." It was a victory over the defenceless
and the unoffending, and its signs and trophies were
the bodies of the murdered women and children.

Our treaties with Prussia in 1785, 1799, and 1828,
still in force in this regard, provide that if one of the
contracting parties should be at war with any other
power the free intercourse and commerce of the subjects
or citizens of the party remaining neutral with the bel-
ligerent powers shall not be interrupted. Germany
has treated this treaty as she has1 treated other scraps
of paper.

But the offence goes far deeper than this. The action
of the German submarines in the cases cited can be
justified only by a plea which would likewise justify
the wholesale poisoning of wells in the path of a hostile
army, or the shipping of infected rags into the cities
of a hostile country; a plea which would justify the
torture of prisoners and the reduction of captured women
to the slavery of concubinage. Those who advance such
a plea will accept but one counter plea — strength, the
strength and courage of the just man armed.

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MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS

When those who guide the military policy of a state
hold up to the soldiers of their army the Huns, and
the terror once caused by the Huns, for their imitation,
they thereby render themselves responsible for any Hun-
nish deed which may follow. The destruction of cities
like Louvain and Dinant, the scientific vivisection of
Belgium as a warning to other nations, the hideous
wrongdoing to civilians, men, women and children in
Belgium and northern France, in order thereby to ter-
rorize the civilian population — all these deeds, and those
like them, done on the land, have now been paralleled
by what has happened on the sea.

In the teeth of these things, we earn as a nation meas-
ureless scorn and contempt if we follow the lead of
those who exalt peace above righteousness, if we heed
the voices of those feeble folk who bleat to high heaven
that there is peace when there is no peace. For many
months our government has preserved between right and
wrong a neutrality which would have excited the emu-
lous admiration of Pontius Pilate — the arch-typical neu-
tral of all time. We have urged as a justification for
failing to do our duty in Mexico that to do so would
benefit American dollars. Are we now to change
faces and advance the supreme interest of American
dollars as a justification for continuance in the re-
fusal to do the duty imposed on us in connection with
the world war?

Unless we act with immediate decision and vigor
we shall have failed in the duty demanded by humanity
at large, and demanded even more clearly by the self-
respect of the American Republic."

We did not act with immediate decision and vigor.
We did not act at all. The President immediately after
the sinking made a speech in which occurred his sen-

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tence about our "being too proud to fight." This was
accepted, very properly, by foreign nations as the state-
ment of our official head that we ranked in point of na-
tional spirit and power with China. I then published the
following interview :

"I think that China is entitled to draw all the
comfort she can from this statement, and it would
be well for the United States to ponder seriously
what the effect upon China has been of managing
her foreign affairs during the last fifteen years on
the theory thus enunciated.

"If the United States is satisfied with occupying
some time in the future the precise international
position that China now occupies, then the United
States can afford to act on this theory. But it
cannot so act if it desires to regain the position
won for it under Washington and by the men
who in the days of Abraham Lincoln wore the blue
under Grant and the gray under Lee.

"I very earnestly hope that the President will act
promptly. The proper time for deliberation was
prior to sending his message that our Government
would hold Germany to a 'strict accountability'
if it did the things which it has now actually
done.

"The 150 babies drowned on the Liisitania, the
hundreds of women drowned with them — scores
of these women and children being Americans —
and the American ship, the Gulflight, which was
torpedoed, offer an eloquent commentary on the
actual working of the theory that it is not neces-
sary to assert rights and that a policy of blood
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MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS

and iron can safely be met by a policy of milk and
water.

"I see it stated in the dispatches from Washing-
ton that Germany now offers to stop the practice
of murder on the high seas, committed in viola-
tion of the neutral rights she is pledged to pre-
serve, if we will now abandon further neutral rights,
which by her treaty she has solemnly pledged herself
to see that we exercise without molestation.

"Such a proposal is not even entitled to an answer.
The manufacture and shipments of arms and am-
munition to any belligerent is moral or immoral,
according to the use to which the arms and muni-
tions are to be put. If they are to be used to
prevent the redress of hideous wrongs inflicted on
Belgium then it is immoral to ship them. If they
are to be used for the redress of those wrongs and
the restoration of Belgium to her deeply-wronged
and unoffending people, then it is eminently moral
to send them.

"Without 24 hours' delay this country should and
could take effective action. It should take possession
of all the interned German ships, including the Ger-
man warships, and hold them as a guarantee that
ample satisfaction shall be given us. Furthermore
it should declare that in view of Germany's mur-
derous offences against the rights of neutrals all
commerce with Germany shall be forthwith forbid-
den and all commerce of every kind permitted and
encouraged with France, England, Russia, and the
rest of the civilized world.

"I do not believe that the firm assertion of our
rights means war, but, in any event, it is well to
remember there are things worse than war.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

"Let us as a nation understand that peace is worth
having only when it is the hand-maiden of inter-
national righteousness and of national self-respect."

356

APPENDIX B

AMERICANISM

'Address delivered before the Knights of Columbus, Car-
negie Hall, New York, Oct. 12, 1915

FOUR centuries and a quarter have gone by since
Columbus by discovering America opened the great-
est era in world history. Four centuries have passed since
the Spaniards began that colonization on the main land
which has resulted in the growth of the nations of Latin-
America. Three centuries have passed since, with the
settlements on the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts,
the real history of what is now the United States began.
All this we ultimately owe to the action of an Italian sea-
man in the service of a Spanish King and a Spanish
Queen. It is eminently fitting that one of the largest and
most influential social organizations of this great Repub-
lic,— a Republic in which the tongue is English, and the
blood derived from many sources — should, in its name,
commemorate the great Italian. It is eminently fitting to
make an address on Americanism before this society.

We of the United States need above all things to re-
member that, while we are by blood and culture kin to
each of the nations of Europe, we are also separate from
each of them. We are a new and distinct nationality.
We are developing our own distinctive culture and civili-
zation, and the worth of this civilization will largely de-
pend upon our determination to keep it distinctively our

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own. Our sons and daughters should be educated here
and not abroad. We should freely take from every other
nation whatever we can make of use, but we should adopt
and develop to our own peculiar needs what we thus take,
and never be content merely to copy.

Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic prin-
ciples. These principles are that each man is to be treated
on his worth as a man without regard to the land from
which his forefathers came and without regard to the
creed which he professes. If the United States proves
false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it
will have inflicted the greatest blow on the system of free
popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here
we have had a virgin continent on which to try the experi-
ment of making out of divers race stocks a new nation
and of treating all the citizens of that nation in such a
fashion as to preserve them equality of opportunity in
industrial, civil and political life. Our duty is to secure
each man against any injustice by his fellows.

One of the most important things to secure for him is
the right to hold and to express the religious views that
best meet his own soul needs. Any political movement
directed against any body of our fellow citizens because
of their religious creed is a grave offense against Amer-
ican principles and American institutions. It is a wicked
thing either to support or to oppose a man because of the
creed he professes. This applies to Jew and Gentile, to
Catholic and Protestant, and to the man who would be
regarded as unorthodox by all of them alike. Political
movements directed against certain men because of their
religious belief, and intended to prevent men of that creed
from holding office, have never accomplished anything but
harm. This was true in the days of the "Know-Nothing"
and Native-American parties in the middle of the last

358

century; and it is just as true to-day. Such a movement
directly contravenes the spirit of the Constitution itself.
Washington and his associates believed that it was essen-
tial to the existence of this Republic that there should
never be any union of Church and State; and such union
is partially accomplished wherever a given creed is aided
by the State or when any public servant is elected or
defeated because of his creed. The Constitution ex-
plicitly forbids the requiring of any religious test as a
qualification for holding office. To impose such a test
by popular vote is as bad as to impose it by law. To vote
either for or against a man because of his creed is to
impose upon him a religious test and is a clear violation
of the spirit of the Constitution.

Moreover, it is well to remember that these movements
never achieve the end they nominally have in view. They
do nothing whatsoever except to increase among the men
of the various churches the spirit of sectarian intolerance
which is base and unlovely in any civilization but which
is utterly revolting among a free people that profess the
principles we profess. No such movement can ever per-
manently succeed here. All that it does is for a decade
or so greatly to increase the spirit of theological animos-
ity, both among the people to whom it appeals and among
the people whom it assails. Furthermore, it has in the
past invariably resulted, in so far as it was successful at
all, in putting unworthy men into office ; for there is noth-
ing that a man of loose principles and of evil practices in
public life so desires as the chance to distract attention
from his own shortcomings and misdeeds by exciting and
inflaming theological and sectarian prejudice.

We must recognize that it is a cardinal sin against
democracy to support a man for public office because he
belongs to a given creed or to oppose him because he

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belongs to a given creed. It is just as evil as to draw the
line between class and class, between occupation and occu-
pation in political life. No man who tries to draw either
line is a good American. True Americanism demands
that we judge each man on his conduct, that we so judge
him in private life and that we so judge him in public
life. The line of cleavage drawn on principle and con-
duct in public affairs is never in any healthy community
identical with the line of cleavage between creed and
creed or between class and class. On the contrary, where
the community life is healthy, these lines of cleavage
almost always run nearly at right angles to one another.
It is eminently necessary to all of us that we should have
able and honest public officials in the nation, in the city,
in the state. If we make a serious and resolute effort to
get such officials of the right kind, men who shall not only
be honest but shall be able and shall take the right view
of public questions, we will find as a matter of fact that
the men we thus choose will be drawn from the professors
of every creed and from among men who do not adhere
to any creed.

For thirty-five years I have been more or less actively
engaged in public life, in the performance of my political
duties, now in a public position, now in a private position.
I have fought with all the fervor I possessed for the vari-
ous causes in which with all my heart I believed ; and in
every fight I thus made I have had with me and against
me Catholics, Protestants and Jews. There have been
times when I have had to make the fight for or against
some man of each creed on grounds of plain public moral-
ity, unconnected with questions of public policy. There
were other times when I have made such a fight for or
against a given man, not on grounds of public morality,
for he may have been morally a good man, but on account

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AMERICANISM

of his attitude on questions of public policy, of govern-
mental principle. In both cases, I have always found
myself fighting beside, and fighting against, men of every
creed. The one sure way to have secured the defeat of
every good principle worth fighting for would have been
to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along
sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bit-
terness, either for the purpose of putting into public life
or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given
creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Amer-
icanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American.

I hold that in this country there must be complete sev-
erance of Church and State; that public moneys shall
not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular
creed ; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-
sectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sec-
tarian schools. As a necessary corollary to this, not only
the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the
school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a
par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no
more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant
than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protest-
ant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of
the public schools.

What is true of creed is no less true of nationality.
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Amer-
icanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do
not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very
best Americans I have ever known were naturalized
Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated
American is not an American at all. This is just as true
of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of
the man who puts German or Irish or English or French
before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit

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and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the
United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man
who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and
singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was
born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation
to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to
be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a
tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of
German-Americans, Irish- Americans, English- Americans,
French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-
Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each
at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that
nationality than with the other citizens of the American
Republic. The men who do not become Americans and
nothing else are hyphenated Americans ; and there ought
to be no room for them in this country. The man who
calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by
his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign
land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of
our body politic. He has no place here ; and the sooner he
returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegi-
ance, the better it will be for every good American. There
is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good
American. The only man who is a good American is the
man who is an American and nothing else.

I appeal to history. Among the generals of Wash-
ington in the Revolutionary War were Greene, Putnam
and Lee, who were of English descent ; Wayne and Sulli-
van, who were of Irish descent; Marion, who was of
French descent ; Schuyler, who was of Dutch descent, and
Muhlenberg and Herkimer, who were of German descent.
But they were all of them Americans and nothing else,
just as much as Washington. Carroll of Carrollton was

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AMERICANISM

a Catholic ; Hancock a Protestant ; Jefferson was hetero-
dox from the standpoint of any orthodox creed ; but these
and all the other signers of the Declaration of Independ-
ence stood on an equality of duty and right and liberty,
as Americans and nothing else.

So it was in the Civil War. Farragut's father was born
in Spain and Sheridan's father in Ireland ; Sherman and
Thomas were of English and Custer of German descent ;
and Grant came of a long line of American ancestors
whose original home had been Scotland. But the Admiral
was not a Spanish- American ; and the Generals were not
Scotch-Americans or Irish-Americans or English-Amer-
icans or German-Americans. They were all Americans
and nothing else. This was just as true of Lee and of
Stonewall Jackson and of Beauregard.

When in 1909 our battlefleet returned from its voyage
around the world, Admirals Wainwright and Schroeder
represented the best traditions and the most efficient
action in our navy ; one was of old American blood and of
English descent ; the other was the son of German immi-
grants. But one was not a native-American and the
other a German- American. Each was an American pure
and simple. Each bore allegiance only to the flag of the
United States. Each would have been incapable of con-
sidering the interests of Germany or of England or of any
other country except the United States.

To take charge of the most important work under my
administration, the building of the Panama Canal, I
chose General Goethals. Both of his parents were born
in Holland. But he was just plain United States. He
wasn't a Dutch- American ; if he had been I wouldn't have
appointed him. So it was with such men, among those
who served under me, as Admiral Osterhaus and General
Barry. The father of one was born in Germany, the

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

father of the other in Ireland. But they were both Amer-
icans, pure and simple, and first rate fighting men in addi-
tion.

In my Cabinet at the time there were men of English
and French, German, Irish and Dutch blood, men born
on this side and men born in Germany and Scotland ; but
they were all Americans and nothing else ; and every one
of them was incapable of thinking of himself or of his
fellow-countrymen, excepting in terms of American citi-
zenship. If any one of them had anything in the nature
of a dual or divided allegiance in his soul, he never would
have been appointed to serve under me, and he would
have been instantly removed when the discovery was
made. There wasn't one of them who was capable of
desiring that the policy of the United States should be
shaped with reference to the interests of any foreign
country or with consideration for anything, outside of
the general welfare of humanity, save the honor and
interest of the United States, and each was incapable of
making any discrimination whatsoever among the citizens
of the country he served, of our common country, save
discrimination based on conduct and on conduct alone.

For an American citizen to vote as a German-Amer-
ican, an Irish-American or an English-American is to be
a traitor to American institutions ; and those hyphenated
Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats
of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the Amer-
ican Republic.

Now this is a declaration of principles. How are we
in practical fashion to secure the making of these prin-
ciples part of the very fiber of our national life? First
and foremost let us all resolve that in this country here-
after we shall place far less emphasis upon the question
of right and much greater emphasis upon the matter of

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AMERICANISM

duty. A republic can't succeed and won't succeed in the
tremendous international stress of the modern world
unless its citizens possess that form of high-minded
patriotism which consists in putting devotion to duty
before the question of individual rights. This must be
done in our family relations or the family will go to
pieces ; and no better tract for family life in this country
can be imagined than the little story called "Mother,"
written by an American woman, Kathleen Norris, who
happens to be a member of your own church.

What is true of the family, the foundation stone of
our national life, is not less true of the entire super-
structure. I am, as you know, a most ardent believer in
national preparedness against war as a means of securing
that honorable and self-respecting peace which is the
only peace desired by all high-spirited people. But it is
an absolute impossibility to secure such preparedness in
full and proper form if it is an isolated feature of our
policy. The lamentable fate of Belgium has shown that
no justice in legislation or success in business will be of
the slightest avail if the nation has not prepared in ad-
vance the strength to protect its rights. But it is equally
true that there cannot be this preparation in advance for
military strength unless there is a solid basis of civil and
social life behind it. There must be social, economic and
military preparedness all alike, all harmoniously devel-
oped; and above all there must be spiritual and mental
preparedness.

There must be not merely preparedness in things ma-
terial ; there must be preparedness in soul and mind. To
prepare a great army and navy without preparing a
proper national spirit would avail nothing. And if there
is not only a proper national spirit but proper national
intelligence, we shall realize that even from the stand-

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

point of the army and navy some civil preparedness is
indispensable. For example, a plan for national defence
which does not include the most far-reaching use and
co-operation of our railroads must prove largely futile.
These railroads are organized in time of peace. But we
must have the most carefully thought out organization
from the national and centralized standpoint in order to
use them in time of war. This means first that those in
charge of them from the highest to the lowest must
understand their duty in time of war, must be permeated
with the spirit of genuine patriotism; and second, that
they and we shall understand that efficiency is as essen-
tial as patriotism; one is useless without the other.

Again : every citizen should be trained sedulously by
every activity at our command to realize his duty to the
nation. In France at this moment the workingmen who
are not at the front are spending all their energies with
the single thought of helping their brethren at the front
by what they do in the munition plants, on the railroads,
in the factories. It is a shocking, a lamentable thing that
many of the trade unions of England have taken a
directly opposite view. It is doubtless true that many
of their employers have made excessive profits out of
war conditions; and the Government should have dras-
tically controlled and minimized such profit-making.
Such wealthy men should be dealt with in radical fashion ;
but their misconduct doesn't excuse the misconduct of
those labor men who are trying to make gains at the
cost of their brethren who fight in the trenches. The
thing for us Americans to realize is that we must do
our best to prevent similar conditions from growing
up here. Business men, professional men, and wage
workers alike must understand that there should be no
question of their enjoying any rights whatsoever un-

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AMERICANISM

less in the fullest way they recognize and live up to the
duties that go with those rights. This is just as true of
the corporation as of the trade union, and if either cor-
poration or trade union fails heartily to acknowledge this
truth, then its activities are necessarily anti-social and
detrimental to the welfare of the body politic as a whole.
In war time, when the welfare of the nation is at stake,
it should be accepted as axiomatic that the employer is
to make no profit out of the war save that which is
necessary to the efficient running of the business and to
the living expenses of himself and family, and that the
wage worker is to treat his wage from exactly the same
standpoint and is to see to it that the labor organization
to which he belongs is, in all its activities, subordinated
to the service of the nation.

Now there must be some application of this spirit in
times of peace or we cannot suddenly develop it in time
of war. The strike situation in the United States at this
time is a scandal to the country as a whole and discredit-
able alike to employer and employee. Any employer who
fails to recognize that human rights come first and that
the friendly relationship between himself and those work-
ing for him should be one of partnership and comrade-
ship in mutual help no less than self-help is recreant to
his duty as an American citizen and it is to his interest,
having in view the enormous destruction of life in the
present war, to conserve, and to train to higher efficiency
alike for his benefit and for its, the labor supply. In
return any employee who acts along the lines publicly
advocated by the men who profess to speak for the
I. W. W. is not merely an open enemy of business but of
this entire country and is out of place in our government.

You, Knights of Columbus, are particularly fitted to
play a great part in the movement for national solidarity,

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without which there can be no real efficiency in either
peace or war. During the last year and a quarter it has
been brought home to us in startling fashion that many
of the elements of our nation are not yet properly fused.
It ought to be a literally appalling fact that members of
two of the foreign embassies in this country have been
discovered to be implicated in inciting their fellow-coun-
trymen, whether naturalized American citizens or not, to
the destruction of property and the crippling of American
industries that are operating in accordance with internal
law and international agreement. The malign activity
of one of these embassies, the Austrian, has been brought
home directly to the ambassador in such shape that his
recall has been forced. The activities of the other, the
German, have been set forth in detail by the publication
in the press of its letters in such fashion as to make it
perfectly clear that they were of the same general char-
acter. Of course, the two embassies were merely carry-
ing out the instructions of their home governments.

Nor is it only the Germans and Austrians who take the
view that as a matter of right they can treat their coun-
trymen resident in America, even if naturalized citizens
of the United States, as their allies and subjects to be
used in keeping alive separate national groups profoundly
anti- American in sentiment if the contest comes between
American interests and those of foreign lands in ques-
tion. It has recently been announced that the Russian
government is to rent a house in New York as a national
center to be Russian in faith and patriotism, to foster
the Russian language and keep alive the national feeling
in immigrants who come hither. All of this is utterly
antagonistic to proper American sentiment, whether per-
petrated in the name of Germany, of Austria, of Russia,
of England, or France or any other country.

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AMERICANISM

We should meet this situation by on the one hand
seeing that these immigrants get all their rights as Amer-
ican citizens, and on the other hand insisting that they
live up to their duties as American citizens. Any dis-
crimination against aliens is a wrong, for it tends to put
the immigrant at a disadvantage and to cause him to feel
bitterness and resentment during the very years when
he should be preparing himself for American citizenship.
If an immigrant is not fit to become a citizen, he should
not be allowed to come here. If he is fit, he should be
given all the rights to earn his own livelihood, and to
better himself, that any man can have. Take such a mat-
ter as the illiteracy test ; I entirely agree with those who
feel that many very excellent possible citizens would be
barred improperly by an illiteracy test. But why do you
not admit aliens under a bond to learn to read and write
English within a certain time ? It would then be a duty to
see that they were given ample opportunity to learn to
read and write and that they were deported if they failed
to take advantage of the opportunity. No man can be a
good citizen if he is not at least in process of learning to
speak the language of his fellow-citizens. And an alien
who remains here without learning to speak English for
more than a certain number of years should at the end of
that time be treated as haying refused to take the pre-
liminary steps necessary to complete Americanization and
should be deported. But there should be no denial or
limitation of the alien's opportunity to work, to own
property and to take advantage of civic opportunities.
Special legislation should deal with the aliens who do not
come here to be made citizens. But the alien who comes
here intending to become a citizen should be helped in
every way to advance himself, should be removed from
every possible disadvantage and in return should be re-

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

quired under penalty of being sent back to the country
from which he came, to prove that he is in good faith
fitting himself to be an American citizen. We should set
a high standard, and insist on men reaching it; but if
they do reach it we should treat them as on a full equality
with ourselves.

Therefore, we should devote ourselves as a preparative
to preparedness, alike in peace and war, to secure the
three elemental things ; one, a common language, the Eng-
lish language; two, the increase in our social loyalty —
citizenship absolutely undivided, a citizenship which ac-
knowledges no flag except the flag of the United States
and which emphatically repudiates all duality of na-
tional loyalty; and third, an intelligent and resolute
effort for the removal of industrial and social unrest, an
effort which shall aim equally to secure every man his
rights and to make every man understand that unless he
in good faith performs his duties he is not entitled to any
rights at all.

The American people should itself do these things for
the immigrants. If we leave the immigrant to be helped
by representatives of foreign governments, by foreign
societies, by a press and institutions conducted in a for-
eign language and in the interest of foreign governments,
and if we permit the immigrants to exist as alien groups,
each group sundered from the rest of the citizens of the
country, we shall store up for ourselves bitter trouble in
the future.

I am certain that the only permanently safe attitude
for this country as regards national preparedness for self-
defense is along the lines of obligatory universal service
on the Swiss model. Switzerland is the most democratic
of nations. Its army is the most democratic army in the
world. There isn't a touch of militarism or aggressive-

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AMERICANISM

ness about Switzerland. It has been found as a matter
of actual practical experience in Switzerland that the
universal military training has made a very marked in-
crease in social efficiency and in the ability of the man
thus trained to do well for himself in industry. The man
who has received the training is a better citizen, is more
self-respecting, more orderly, better able to hold his own,
and more willing to respect the rights of others, and at
the same time he is a more valuable and better paid man
in his business. We need that the navy and the army
should be greatly increased and that their efficiency as
units and in the aggregate should be increased to an even
greater degree than their numbers. An adequate regular
reserve should be established. Economy should be in-
sisted on, and first of all in the abolition of useless army
posts and navy yards. The National Guard should be
supervised and controlled by the Federal War Depart-
ment. Training camps such as at Plattsburg should be
provided on a nation-wide basis and the government
should pay the expenses. Foreign-born as well as native-
born citizens should be brought together in those camps ;
and each man at the camp should take the oath of allegi-
ance as unreservedly and unqualifiedly as the men of the
regular army and navy now take it. Not only should
battleships, battle cruisers, submarines, aircraft, ample
coast and field artillery be provided and a greater am-
munition supply system, but there should be a utilization
of those engaged in such professions as the ownership
and management of motor cars, aviation, and the profes-
sion of engineering. Map-making and road improve-
ment should be attended to, and, as I have already said,
the railroads brought into intimate touch with the War
Department. Moreover, the government should deal
with conservation of all necessary war supplies such as

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

mine products, potash, oil lands and the like. Further-
more, all munition plants should be carefully surveyed
with special reference to their geographic distribution.
Provision should be made for munition and supply fac-
tories west of the Alleghenies. Finally, remember that
the men must be sedulously trained in peace to use this
material or we shall merely prepare our ships, guns and
products as gifts to the enemy. All of these things
should be done in any event. But let us never forget that
the most important of all things is to introduce universal
military service.

Let me repeat that this preparedness against war must
be based upon efficiency and justice in the handling
of ourselves in time of peace. If belligerent govern-
ments, while we are not hostile to them but merely neu-
tral, strive nevertheless to make of this nation many
nations, each hostile to the others and none of them loyal
to the central government, then it may be accepted as
certain that they would do far worse to us in time of war.
If Germany and Austria encourage strikes and sabotage
in our munition plants while we are neutral it may be
accepted as axiomatic that they would do far worse to
us if we were hostile. It is our duty from the stand-
point of self-defence to secure the complete Americani-
zation of our people; to make of the many peoples of
this country a united nation, one in speech and feeling
and all, so far as possible, sharers in the best that each
has brought to our shores.

The foreign-born population of this country must be an
Americanized population — no other kind can fight the
battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk
the language of its native-born fellow citizens, it must
possess American citizenship and American ideals — and
therefore we native born citizens must ourselves prac-

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AMERICANISM

tice a high and fine idealism, and shun as we would the
plague the sordid materialism which treats pecuniary
profit and gross bodily comfort as the only evidences
of success. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in
word and deed and must show that in very fact it has re-
nounced allegiance to every prince, potentate or foreign
government. It must be maintained on an American
standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in
important plants and at critical times. None of these ob-
jects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colo-
nies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they
cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant
only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be al-
lowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter.
Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types,
but to maintain a new American type and then to secure
loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty
unless we make this a country where men shall feel that
they have justice and also where they shall feel that they
are required to perform the duties imposed upon them.
The policy of "Let alone" which we have hitherto pur-
sued is thoroughly vicious from two standpoints. By this
policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often
the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice.
Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon
the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they
are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice,
that they are expected to be heartily and actively and
single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by
living under it.

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thou-
sands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while
they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than
fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being.
We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd
men and women about it without care for their welfare.
We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the
kind of living system which makes impossible the decen-
cies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low
wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which
mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and
morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford
to leave American mines, munitions plants and general
resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to Amer-
ica and even likely to be made hostile to America by
machinations such as have recently been provided in the
case of the above-named foreign embassies in Washing-
ton. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time
of war men working on our railways or working in our
munition plants who would in the name of duty to their
own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent
events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and
strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign
powers of Europe within their definition of neutral prac-
tices. What would be done to us in the name of war
if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

Justice Bowling in his speech has described the excel-
lent fourth degree of your order, of how in it you dwell
upon duties rather than rights, upon the great duties of
patriotism and of national spirit. It is a fine thing to
have a society that holds up such a standard of duty.
I ask you to make a special effort to deal with Amer-
icanization, the fusing into one nation, a nation necessar-
ily different from all other nations, of all who come to
our shores. Pay heed to the three principal essentials:
(i) The need of a common language, English, with a
minimum amount of illiteracy; (2) the need of a com-

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AMERICANISM

mon civil standard, similar ideals, beliefs and customs
symbolized by the oath of allegiance to America ; and (3)
the need of a high standard of living, of reasonable equal-
ity of opportunity and of social and industrial justice. In
every great crisis in our history, in the Revolution and in
the Civil War, and in the lesser crises, like the Spanish
War, all factions and races have been forgotten in the
common spirit of Americanism. Protestant and Cath-
olic, men of English or of French, of Irish or of German
descent, have joined with a single-minded purpose to
secure for the country what only can be achieved by the
resultant union of all patriotic citizens. You of this
organization have done a great service by your insistence
that citizens should pay heed first of all to their duties.
Hitherto undue prominence has been given to the ques-
tion of rights. Your organization is a splendid engine for
giving to the stranger within our gates a high conception
of American citizenship. Strive for unity. We suffer at
present from a lack of leadership in these matters.

Even in the matter of national defence there is such a
labyrinth of committees and counsels and advisers that
there is a tendency on the part of the average citizen to
become confused and do nothing. I ask you to help
strike the note that shall unite our people. As a people
we must be united. If we are not united we shall slip
into the gulf of measureless disaster. We must be strong
in purpose for our own defence and bent on securing
justice within our borders. If as a nation we are split
into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look
upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by
the hatred of creed for creed or of those of one race
against those of another race, surely we shall fail and
our great democratic experiment on this continent will
go down in crushing overthrow. I ask you here to-night

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

and those like you to take a foremost part in the move-
ment— a young men's movement — for a greater and bet-
ter America in the future.

All of us, no matter from what land our parents came,
no matter in what way we may severally worship our
Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united
America for the elimination of race and religious preju-
dice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both
big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the
American standard of living. We must stand for an
adequate national control which shall secure a better
training of our young men in time of peace, both for the
work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct
every national resource, material and spiritual, to the
task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people
to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make
life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit
us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind.
This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy,
with those qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of
mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to
any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own
against aggression by any other nation. In our relations
with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and
disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the
baseness of spirit which tamely submits to wrongdoing.
Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the
establishment within our own borders of that stern and
lofty standard of personal and public morality which
shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall
insist in return upon the full performance by each man
of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation
whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbol-
ized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind.

376

APPENDIX C

November 24, 1915.
My dear Mr. Dutton:

Even to nerves dulled and jaded by the heaped-up
horrors of the past year and a half, the news of the
terrible fate that has befallen the Armenians must give
a fresh shock of sympathy and indignation. Let me
emphatically point out that the sympathy is useless un-
less it is accompanied with indignation, and that the
indignation is useless if it exhausts itself in words in-
stead of taking shape in deeds.

If this people through its government had not shirked
its duty in Mexico for the last five years, and if this
people through its government had not shirked its duty
in connection with the world war for the last six-
teen months, we would now be able to take effective
action on behalf of Armenia. Mass meetings on behalf
of the Armenians amount to nothing whatever if they
are mere methods of giving a sentimental but ineffective
and safe outlet to the emotion of those engaged in them.
Indeed they amount to less, than nothing. The habit
of giving emotional expression to feelings without fol-
lowing the expression by action is in the end thoroughly
detrimental both to the will power and to the morality
of the persons concerned. As long as this government
proceeds, whether as regards Mexico or as regards
Germany, whether as regards the European War, or as
regards Belgium, on the principles of the peace-at-any-
price men, of the professional pacifists, just so long

377

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART'

it will be as absolutely ineffective for international right-
eousness as China itself. The men who act on the motto
of "safety first" are acting on a motto which could be
appropriately used by the men on a sinking steamer who
jump into the boats ahead of the women and children
— and who at least do not commemorate this fact by
wearing buttons with "safety first" on them as a device.
Until we put honor and duty first, and are willing to
risk something in order to achieve righteousness both
for ourselves and for others, we shall accomplish noth-
ing; and we shall earn and deserve the contempt of
the strong nations of mankind.

One reason why I do not wish to take part in a mass
meeting only for the denunciation of the atrocities com-
mitted on the Armenians is because there are ignoble
souls who have preached professional pacifism as a
creed, or who have refused to attend similar meetings
on behalf of the Belgians, who yet do not fear to take
such action on behalf of the Armenians — for the simple
reason that there is in America no Turkish vote, and
because Turkey is not our neighbor as Mexico is, and
not a formidable aggressive power like Germany, and so
it is safe both politically and materially to denounce
her. The American professional pacifists, the Ameri-
can men and women of the peace-at-any-price type, who
join in meetings to "denounce war" or with empty words
"protest" on behalf of the Armenians or other tortured
and ruined peoples carry precisely the weight that an
equal number of Chinese pacifists would carry if at
a similar meeting they went through similar antics in
Peking. They do not wear pigtails; but it is to be re-
gretted that they do not carry some similar outward and
visible sign of their inward and spiritual disgrace. They
accomplish nothing for peace; and they do accomplish

378

ARMENIAN OUTRAGES

something against justice. They do harm instead of
good; and they deeply discredit the nation to which
they belong. It was announced the other day, by cer-
tain politicians interested in securing votes, that at the
end of the war this Government would "insist" on Rus-
sia and Roumania doing justice to all Jews. The con-
duct of this Government during the present war, and
its utter refusal to back words with deeds, has made
it utterly unable to "insist" on anything of the kind,
whether as regards Russia or Roumania or any other
power. A nation too timid to protect its own men,
women and children from murder and outrage and too
timid even to speak on behalf of Belgium, will not
carry much weight by "protest" or "insistence" on be-
half of the suffering Jews and Armenians. Foreign pow-
ers will attribute such "protests" or "insistence," coupled
with our failure to act in cases of other nationalities,
merely to the fact that there is in this country neither
a Russian nor a Turkish vote — and will despise us
accordingly.

All of the terrible iniquities of the past year and
a half, including this crowning iniquity of the whole-
sale slaughter of the Armenians, can be traced directly
to the initial wrong committed on Belgium by her in-
vasion and subjugation; and the criminal responsibility
of Germany must be shared by the neutral powers,
headed by the United States, for their failure to pro-
test when this initial wrong was committed. In the
case of the United States additional responsibility rests
upon it because its lack of influence for justice and peace
during the last sixteen months has been largely due to
the course of timid and unworthy abandonment of duty
which it has followed for nearly five years as regards
Mexico. Scores of our soldiers have been killed and

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

wounded, hundreds of our civilians, both men and
women, have been murdered or outraged in person or
property, by the Mexicans ; and we have not only taken
no action but have permitted arms to be exported to
the bandits who were cutting one another's throats in
Mexico and who used these arms to kill Americans ; and
although we have refused to help our own citizens
against any of the chiefs of these bandits, we have
now and then improperly helped one chief against an-
other. The failure to do our duty in Mexico created
the contempt which made Germany rightfully think it
safe to go into the wholesale murder that accompanied
the sinking of the Lusitania; and the failure to do our
duty in the case of the Lusitania made Germany, acting
through Austria, rightfully think it safe to go into the
wholesale murder that marked the sinking of the
Ancona.

The invasion of Belgium was followed by a policy
of terrorism toward the Belgian population, the shoot-
ing of men, women and children, the destruction of
Dinant and Louvain and many other places; the bom-
bardment of unfortified places, not only by ships and
by land forces but by air-craft, resulting in the killing of
many hundreds of civilians, men, women and children,
in England, France, Belgium and Italy; in the destruc-
tion of mighty temples and great monuments of art,
in Rheims, in Venice, in Verona. The devastation of
Poland and of Serbia has been awful beyond descrip-
tion and has been associated with infamies surpassing
those of the dreadful religious and racial wars of
seventeenth-century Europe. Such deeds as have been
done by the nominally Christian powers in Europe, from
the invasion of Belgium by Germany to the killing of
Miss Cavell by the German Government, things done

380

ARMENIAN OUTRAGES

wholesale, things done retail, have been such as we
had hoped would never again occur in civilized war-
fare. They are far worse than anything that has oc-
curred in such warfare since the close of the Napole-
onic contests a century ago. Such a deed as the exe-
cution of Miss Cavell, for instance, would have been
utterly impossible in the days of the worst excitement
during our Civil War. For all of this, the pacifists
who dare not speak for righteousness, and who pos-
sess such an unpleasant and evil prominence in the
United States, must share the responsibility with the
most brutal type of militarists. The weak and timid
milk-and-water policy of the professional pacifists is
just as responsible as the blood-and-iron policy of the
ruthless and unscrupulous militarist for the terrible
recrudescence of evil on a gigantic scale in the civilized
world.

The crowning outrage has been committed by the.
Turks on the Armenians. They have suffered atrocities
so hideous that it is difficult to name them, atrocities
such as those inflicted upon conquered nations by the
followers of Attila and of Genghis Khan. It is dread-
ful to think that these things can be done and that
this nation nevertheless remains "neutral not only in
deed but in thought," between right and the most hide-
ous wrong, neutral between despairing and hunted peo-
ple, people whose little children are murdered and their
women raped, and the victorious and evil wrong-
doers.

There are many sincere and wise men in China who
are now endeavoring to lift China from the old con-
ditions. These old conditions made her the greatest
example of a pacifistic, peace-at-any-price, non-mili-
taristic people. Because of their cult of pacifism, the

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

Chinese, like the Koreans, and utterly unlike the Jap-
anese, became absolutely powerless to defend them-
selves, or to win or retain the respect of other nations.
They were also of course utterly helpless to work for
the good of others. The professional pacifists of the
United States are seeking to make the United States
follow in the footsteps of China. They represent what
has been on the whole the most evil influence at work
in the United States for the last fifty years; and for
five years they have in international affairs shaped our
governmental policy. These men, whether politicians,
publicists, college presidents, capitalists, labor leaders,
or self-styled philanthropists, have done everything they
could to relax the fiber of the American character and
weaken the strength of the American will. They teach
our people to seek that debasing security which is to
be found in love of ease, in fear of risk, in the craven
effort to avoid any duty that is hard or hazardous —
a security which purchases peace in the present not only
at the cost of humiliation in the present but at the cost
of disaster in the future. They are seeking to Chinafy
this country. In so doing they not only make us work
for our own undoing, and for the ultimate ruin of the
great democratic experiment for which our great Ameri-
can republic stands ; but they also render us utterly pow-
erless to work for others. We have refused to do our
duty by Belgium; we refuse to do our duty by Ar-
menia; because we have deified peace at any price, be-
cause we have preached and practised that evil pacifism
which is the complement to and the encouragement of
alien militarism. Such pacifism puts peace above right-
eousness, and safety in the present above both duty in
the present and safety in the future.

J trust that all Americans worthy of the name feel
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ARMENIAN OUTRAGES

their deepest indignation and keenest sympathy aroused
by the dreadful Armenian atrocities. I trust that they
feel in the same way about the ruin of Belgium's na-
tionality, and realize that a peace obtained without re-
storing Belgium to its own people and righting the
wrongs of the Armenians would be worse than any
war. I trust they realize that unless America prepares
to defend itself she can perform no duty to others;
and under such circumstances she earns only derision
if she prattles about forming a league for world peace,
or about arbitration treaties and disarmament proposals,
and commission-investigation treaties such as the un-
speakably foolish ones negotiated a year or two ago at
Washington and promptly disregarded by the very Ad-
ministration that negotiated them.

Let us realize that the words of the weakling and
the coward, of the pacifist and the poltroon, are worth-
less to stop wrongdoing. Wrongdoing will only be
stopped by men who are brave as well as just, who put
honor above safety, who are true to a lofty ideal of
duty, who prepare in advance to make their strength
effective, and who shrink from no hazard, not even
the final hazard of war, if necessary in order to serve
the great cause of righteousness. When our people
take this stand, we shall also be able effectively to take
a stand in international matters which shall prevent such
cataclysms of wrong as have been witnessed in Belgium
and on an even greater scale in Armenia.

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAMUEL T. BUTTON, ESQ.,

70 Fifth Ave.,

New York City.
Chairman of the Committee on the Armenian Outrages.

APPENDIX D

[Speech of Senator Miles Poindexter; reprinted from
the Congressional Record of January 12, 1916.]

COL. ROOSEVELT'S RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS — THE
TRUTH OF HISTORY FOR THE INFORMATION OF SEC-
RETARY GARRISON — AN INCESSANT AND EARNEST AD-
VOCATE OF PREPAREDNESS FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS
— PRESIDENT WILSON'S POLICY OUTLINED AND CON-
DEMNED 18 YEARS IN ADVANCE — PREPAREDNESS URGED
IN EVERY MESSAGE TO CONGRESS WHILE PRESIDENT
— A BIG, EFFICIENT NAVY AND AN EFFICIENT ARMY
DEMANDED AS THE SUREST GUARANTY OF PEACE —
THE Swiss SYSTEM OF MILITARY SERVICE HELD UP
AS A MODEL TO CONGRESS IN 1906 — HYPHENATED
AMERICANS CONDEMNED AS UNDESIRABLE CITIZENS
IN 1894 — ARBITRATION TREATIES DECLARED USELESS
WHEN UNBACKED BY FORCE.

IN a carefully prepared statement issued recently at
Washington (Dec. 21, 1915) the Secretary of War,
Mr. Garrison, representing President Wilson, and speak-
ing in the unruffled serenity of that state of bliss in which
'tis said 'tis folly to be wise, made the following engag-
ing observations :

"Mr. Roosevelt is welcomed as a convert on the issue
of preparedness, but the front pew is already filled be-
fore the conversion, and he must now rely on the strength
of his voice for recognition.

" 'Preparedness' was with him an acquired taste.

384

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

Others brought it forward and urged it upon the atten-
tion of the people, and it was only after he found that
it suited their taste that he became vocal in its behalf."

THE PLAIN TALE OF HISTORY

"Mark now, how plain a tale shall put you down," Mr.
Secretary.

Theodore Roosevelt began to advocate preparedness
33 years ago, and has advocated it unceasingly and un-
waveringly from that time to the present moment. He
has been during all those years at every opportunity
not merely "vocal" on the subject but vociferously vocal.

Shortly after his graduation from Harvard in 1882
he wrote in the preface to his history of the War of 1812
these passages:

CRIMINAL FOLLY OF JEFFERSON AND MADISON

"The operations of this war on land teach nothing
new; it is the old, old lesson that miserly economy in
preparation may in the end involve a lavish outlay of
men and money which, after all, comes too late to more
than partially offset the evils produced by the original
shortsighted parsimony. It was criminal folly for Jef-
ferson and his follower, Madison, to neglect to give us
a force either of Regulars or of well-trained Volunteers
during the 12 years they had in which to prepare for
the struggle that any one might see was inevitable.

"The necessity for an efficient Navy is so evident
that only our almost incredible shortsightedness prevents
our at once preparing one."

Fifteen years later, writing a condensed history of
the same war for an English publication, Col. Roosevelt
reiterated his earlier views :

TWENTY SHIPS OF THE LINE WOULD HAVE PREVENTED
THE WAR

(From "The War with the United States, 1812-15,"
385

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

written for the English History of the Royal Navy in
1897.)

"Had America possessed (in 1812) a fleet of 20 ships
of the line her sailors could have plied their trade un-
molested, and the three years of war with its loss in
blood and money would have been avoided. From the
merely monetary standpoint such a navy would have been
the cheapest kind of insurance, and morally its advan-
tages would have been incalculable, for every Ameri-
can worth the name would have lifted his head higher
because of its existence."

JEFFERSON'S PASSION FOR PEACE

"But unfortunately the Nation lacked the wisdom to
see this, and it chose and rechose for the Presidency
Thomas Jefferson, who avowed that his 'passion was
peace,' and whose timidity surpassed even his philan-
thropy."

EVIL CAUSED BY JEFFERSON AND MADISON

"There never was a better example of the ultimate
evil caused by a timid effort to secure peace and the
refusal to make preparations for war than that afforded
by the American people under the Presidencies of Jef-
ferson and Madison."

These citations disclose the original inventor of Presi-
dent Wilson's "too-proud-to-fight" policy. Jefferson's
"passion was peace." In his recent address to Con-
gress, President Wilson said of the American people
that "their passion is for peace."

Instead of being a "convert" to any phase of President
Wilson's policy, 18 years before that policy was put
into operation Theodore Roosevelt was outlining it with
singular accuracy and denouncing it as leading to na-
tional humiliation and dishonor, as the following cita-
tions abundantly testify :

386

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

PRESIDENT WILSON'S FOREIGN POLICY DENOUNCED l8
YEARS IN ADVANCE — NO PEACE AT THE PRICE OF NA-
TIONAL HONOR

(Address, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, before
the Naval War College, June, 1897.)

"A really great people, proud and high-spirited, would
face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that
base prosperity which is bought at the price of national
honor."

WORDS WITHOUT DEEDS CAUSE OF HUMILIATION

"Unreadiness for war is merely rendered more disas-
trous by readiness to bluster; to talk defiance and advo-
cate a vigorous policy in words, while refusing to back
up these words by deeds, is cause for humiliation.

No material loss can begin to compensate for the loss
of national self-respect.

No nation should ever wage war wantonly, but no
nation should ever avoid it at the cost of national honor."

DIPLOMACY WITHOUT FORCE USELESS

"Diplomacy is utterly useless unless there is force be-
hind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of
the soldier."

SAY WHAT IS NECESSARY AND STAND BY IT

(Speech at Chicago, April 2, 1903.)

"This is in substance what my theory of what our
foreign policy should be: Let us not boast, not insult
any one, but make up our minds coolly what is neces-
sary to say, and then stand by it whatever the conse-
quences may be."

A COWARD'S PEACE CONTEMPTIBLE

(Speech at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., June
21, 1905.)

"Peace of a valuable type comes not to the man who
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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

craves it because he is afraid, but to the man who de-
mands it because it is right.

The peace granted contemptuously to the weakling
and the coward is but a poor boon after it has been
granted."

A GREAT NATION SHOULD NOT BLUFF

(Address at Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.,
June 22, 1905.)

"I demand that the Nation do its duty and accept the
responsibility that must go with greatness.

I ask that the Nation dare to be great," and that in
daring to be great it show that it knows how to do jus-
tice to the weak no less than to exact justice from the
strong.

In order to take such a position of being a great na-
tion the one thing that we must not do is to bluff.

The unpardonable thing is to say that we will act as
a big nation and then decline to take the necessary steps
to make the words good.

Keep on building and maintaining at the highest point
of efficiency the United States Navy or quit trying to be
a big nation. Do one or the other."

RIGHTEOUSNESS BEFORE PEACE

(Address at Harvard University, June 28, 1905.)
"Of course I am for peace. Of course every President
who is fit to be President must be for peace. But I am
for one thing before peace; I am for righteousness first
and then peace."

(Address at Richmond, Va., October 18, 1905.)
"Our mission in the world should be one of peace, but
not the peace of cravens, the peace granted contemptu-
ously to those who purchase it by surrendering the right.
No! Our voice must be effective for peace because
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RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

it is raised for righteousness first and for peace only
as the handmaiden of righteousness."

(Annual message to Congress, December 3, 1906.)

"It must ever be kept in mind that war is not merely
justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon
an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained
by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of na-
tional welfare.

Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coin-
cides with righteousness; but it is righteousness and not
peace which should bind the conscience of a nation, as
it should bind the conscience of an individual; and
neither a nation nor an individual can surrender con-
science to another's keeping.

A just war is in the long run far better for a nation's
soul than the most prosperous peace obtained by acqui-
escence in wrong or injustice."

CRIMINAL NOT TO PREPARE FOR WAR

"Moreover, though it is criminal for a nation not to
prepare for war, so that it may escape the dreadful
consequences of being defeated in war, yet it must al-
ways be remembered that even to be defeated in war
may be far better than not to have fought at all.

As has been well and finely said, a beaten nation is not
necessarily a disgraced nation; but the nation or man is
disgraced if the obligation to defend the right is shirked."

A NATION NOT AFRAID

(Address to the graduating class of the Naval Acad-
emy, Annapolis, June 23, 1905.)

"What we desire is to have it evident that this Nation
seeks peace, not because it is afraid, but because it
believes in the eternal laws of justice and right living."

CONSCIENCELESS WAR A CRIME AGAINST ALL HUMANITY

(Annual message to Congress, December 5, 1905.)
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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

"A wanton or useless war, or a war of mere aggres-N
sion — in short, any war begun or carried on in a con-
scienceless spirit — is to be condemned as a peculiarly
atrocious crime against all humanity.

Our aim is righteousness. Peace is normally the hand-
maiden of righteousness; but when peace and right-
eousness conflict, then a great and upright people can
never for a moment hesitate to follow the path which
leads toward righteousness, even though that path also
leads to war."

NO CHOICE LEFT TO ROOSEVELT

When President Wilson put into operation the pre-
cise policy thus condemned in advance, what choice had
Col. Roosevelt but to denounce him? Could he, on the
plea that all must "stand by the President," abandon the
convictions and utterances of a lifetime and defend a
policy of national dishonor?

"I would have thrown up my hat for Wilson," the
Colonel said recently, "if only he had given me the chance
by acting in the Presidency as a sound American of
rugged strength and patriotism. When he trailed the
honor of the United States in the dust, I, as a good
American, had no alternative but to oppose him."

So long ago as 1905, as the first quotation cited above
shows, the Colonel specified the kind of war that Ger-
many is waging as a "particularly atrocious crime against
all humanity," and defined the course which, in his opin-
ion, the Nation should not for a moment hesitate to
follow in regard to it.

SAMPLES OF ROOSEVELT'S METHOD

Not in words alone but in acts does Col. Roosevelt's
record show flat disagreement with the Wilson policy
in international controversies. What stronger contrast
could there be to President Wilson's methods in deal-

390

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

ing with Germany than is afforded in the following
incident, which is described in a recently published "Life
of John Hay"?

GERMANY BROUGHT TO BOOK IN IQO2

(From the "Life of John Hay," by William Roscoe
Thayer, Vol. II, pp. 284, 285, 286.)

"In 1902 one of the periodic outbreaks to which Ven-
ezuela was addicted gave him (Hay) an excuse for put-
ting to the test whether or not the United States would
defend the Monroe Doctrine by force of arms. The
Venezuelans owed the Germans, the English, and the
Italians large amounts, which they had put off paying
until their creditors began to suspect that they never
intended to pay at all. The Kaiser apparently counted
on the resistance of the Venezuelans to furnish him a
pretext for occupying one or more of their seaboard
towns.

In order to disguise the fact that this was a German
undertaking, he looked about for accomplices who would
give to it an international semblance. It happened just
at that time that Germany found herself isolated, as
France and Russia had renewed their bond of friend-
ship. England, too, always suspicious of Russia, and
recently irritated by France, seemed to be looking for
a friend.

By offers which cannot yet be made public, Germany
persuaded the Tory government to draw closer to her.
The immediate result of this adventure in international
coquetry was the joint demand of Germany and England
on Venezuela to pay them their due. Venezuela pro-
crastinated.

The allies then sent warships and established what
they called a 'pacific blockade' on the Venezuelan ports
(December 8, 1901). During the following year Sec-

391

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

retary Hay tried to persuade the blockaders of the un-
wisdom of their action. He persistently called their
attention to the fact that a 'pacific blockade' was a con-
tradiction in terms and that its enforcement against the
rights of neutral nations could not be tolerated. He
also urged arbitration.

Germany deemed that her opportunity had now come,
and on December 8, 1902, she and Great Britain sev-
ered diplomatic relations with Venezuela, making it plain
that the next steps would be the bombardment of Ven-
ezuelan towns and the occupation of Venezuelan
territory.

Here came the test of the Monroe Doctrine. If the
United States permitted foreign nations, under the pre-
tense of supporting their creditors' claims, to invade
a weak debtor State by naval or military expedition,
and to take possession of its territory, what would be-
come of the doctrine?

ROOSEVELT IN PERSONAL CHARGE

At this point the direction of the American policy
passed from Secretary Hay to President Roosevelt.

England and Italy were willing to come to an under-
standing. Germany refused. She stated that if she took
possession of territory such possession would only be
'temporary'; but such possessions easily become per-
manent; and, besides, it is difficult to trust the guaran-
ties which may be treated as 'scraps of paper.'

President Roosevelt did not shirk the test. Although
his action has never been officially described, there is
no reason now for not describing it.

One day, when the crisis was at its height, he sum-
moned to the White House Dr. Holleben, the German
ambassador, and told him that unless Germany consented
to arbitrate, the American squadron under Admiral

392

Dewey would be given orders by noon 10 days later to
proceed to the Venezuelan coast and prevent any taking
possession of Venezuelan territory.

Dr. Holleben began to protest that his imperial master,
having once refused to arbitrate, could not change his
mind. The President said that he was not arguing the
question, because arguments had already been gone over
until no useful purpose would be served by repeating
them; he was simply giving information which the am-
bassador might think it important to transmit to Berlin.

GERMANY NOT ALLOWED TO DODGE

A week passed in silence. Then Dr. Holleben again
called on the President, but said nothing of the Ven-
ezuelan matter. When he rose to go, the President
asked him about it, and when he stated that he had
received nothing from his Government, the President in-
formed him in substance that in view of this fact Ad-
miral Dewey would be instructed to sail a day earlier
than the day he, the President, had originally mentioned.

Much perturbed, the ambassador protested ; the Presi-
dent informed him that not a stroke of a pen had been
put on paper; that if the Emperor would agree to arbi-
trate, he, the President, would heartily praise him for
such action and would treat it as taken on German
initiative; but that within 48 hours there must be an
offer to arbitrate or Dewey would sail with orders
indicated.

Within 36 hours Dr. Holleben returned to the White
House and announced to President Roosevelt that a
dispatch had just come from Berlin, saying that the
Kaiser would arbitrate.

Neither Admiral Dewey (who with an American fleet
was then maneuvering in the West Indies) nor any one
else knew of the step that was to be taken; the naval

393

authorities were merely required to be in readiness, but
were not told what for.

On the announcement that Germany had consented to
arbitrate, the President publicly complimented the Kaiser
on being so staunch an advocate of arbitration.

The humor of this was probably relished more in the
White House than in the palace at Berlin."

In this wise the German Kaiser learned that the Mon-
roe Doctrine was a fact.

There was no note, sharp or otherwise, no bluff or
bluster. Simply verbal information to Germany that the
step contemplated by her would not be tolerated — that
if she did not abandon it the American fleet would sail
for the scene of action.

AMERICAN LIFE PROTECTED IN MOROCCO

Two years later, on a much smaller scale, another
international controversy arose. This raised the simple
question of whether or not the United States Govern-
ment could be depended upon to protect its citizens
abroad as well as at home. This case is recorded also
by Mr. Thayer.

"PERDICARIS ALIVE OR RAIZULI DEAD"

"In June, 1904, an American citizen, Ion H. Perdicaris,
was seized by Raizuli, a Moroccan bandit, and held for
ransom. After much shilly-shallying, and threats by
Raizuli that he would kill his prisoner unless the money
was speedily paid, Hay cabled to Gummere, American
consul at Tangier, on June 22 :

'We want Perdicaris alive or Raizuli dead/ adding
that Gummere was 'not to commit us about landing
marines or seizing customhouse.'

In his diary Hay made the following entries:

'June 23. My telegram to Gummere had an uncalled-

394

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

for success. It is curious how a concise impropriety
hits the public.'

'June 24. Gummere telegraphs that he expects Per-
dicaris to-night'

'June 27. Perdicaris wires his thanks.' "

"So speedily," comments William Roscoe Thayer, in
his "Life of John Hay," "did even a brigand, appar-
ently safe in the depths of Morocco, recognize the note
of command in the voice from over seas."

AMERICAN OPINIONS AT THE TIME

The news of the cable message was published on June
22. The Republican national convention, which on the
following day nominated Roosevelt for President, was
in session at the time in Chicago. The correspondent of
the New York Tribune wrote about it as follows :

" 'Perdicaris alive or Raizuli dead' went through the
convention like an electric thrill, and it was more talked
about at night than any feature of the day's work. The
prevailing impression was that if Secretary Hay had
sent the telegram it was after consultation with the
President, and that there must have been ample jus-
tification. Delegates from all sections of the country
discussed it in all its potential phases, and in almost every
instance warmly commended it.

" 'It is pithy, pungent, and peremptory. I like it, and
so do the people,' said Senator McComas, of Maryland.

" 'It is the kind of a telegram,' said Senator Spooner,
of Wisconsin, 'that would provoke rapturous applause in
any political convention. It touches a popular chord.
This Government is bound to protect its citizens abroad
as well as at home.'

" 'The American people will not back down on a mes-
sage of that kind,' said Representative Grosvenor, of
Ohio. 'The people admire a declaration of that kind

395

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

when the justification is sufficient. It may not be couched
exactly in diplomatic words, but its meaning is unmistak-
able. The people are quick to respond when their pa-
triotism is appealed to. The Morocco bandit will find
that there is a vigorous and united sentiment supporting
the President and Secretary Hay in the stand they have
taken.'

"'It was good, hot stuff, and echoed my sentiments,'
said Congressman Dwight, of New York. 'The people
want an administration that will stand by its citizens,
even if it takes a fleet to do it.'

" 'It was magnificent — magnificent !' said Senator De-
pew. 'Every right-minded American will heartily in-
dorse Mr. Hay's strong stand.'

" 'Do I like it ?' exclaimed W. A. Elstun, of Kansas,
one of the delegates. 'Bet your bottom dollar I like it.
Roosevelt is behind that cable message to that fine old
body snatcher, Raisuli. Out in Kansas we believe in
keeping the peace but in fighting against the wrong.
Roosevelt and Hay know what they are doing. Our
people like courage. We'll stand for anything those two
men do.' "

Commenting on the message a few days later, after
Perdicaris had been released, the Tribune said :

"It is easy to sneer at it. A dog may bay at the moon.
But every rational man knows that a nation that does not
protect its own citizens is unworthy of the name of Gov-
ernment, and that, moreover, the only way to make citi-
zenship respected and secure is to make outrage upon it
perilous."

THE TRUE AMERICAN POLICY

The quoted comments by American statesmen reflect
accurately the old-time American view of what the duty
of a national administration is in cases affecting the lives

396

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

of American citizens abroad. It accords with the view
of that duty which Theodore Roosevelt holds and ex-
pounds to-day, as he has always held and expounded it.
It is diametrically opposed to the policy pursued by the
Wilson administration. In both the instances above re-
ferred to the outcome was not war, but peace with honor.

TWENTY YEARS' ADVOCACY OF PREPAREDNESS
From the moment he became Assistant Secretary of
the Navy in 1897, down to the time when he retired from
the Presidency in 1909, in all his public addresses, in all
his annual messages to Congress, Col. Roosevelt advo-
cated with tireless energy preparedness for war as the
surest guaranty for peace. For the information of Sec-
retary Garrison a partial collection of these utterances,
beginning with those of his annual messages, is appended :

PREPAREDNESS URGED IN MESSAGES TO CONGRESS

(First annual message to Congress Dec. 7, 1901.)
"The work of upbuilding the Navy must be steadily
continued. No one point of our policy, foreign or do-
mestic, is more important than this to the honor and
material welfare, and above all, to the peace of our Na-
tion in the future."

PREPARATION LED TO VICTORY IN 1898

"It was forethought and preparation which secured us
the overwhelming triumph in 1898. If we fail to show
forethought and preparation now there may come a time
when disaster will befall us instead of triumph."
(Second annual message to Congress, Dec. 2, 1902.)
"There should be no halt in the work of building up the
Navy, providing every year additional fighting craft."

A GOOD NAVY THE SUREST GUARANTY OF PEACE

"A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the
surest guaranty of peace.

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

The refusal to maintain such a Navy would invite
trouble, and if trouble came would insure disaster.

Fatuous self-complacency or vanity, or shortsighted-
ness in refusing to prepare for danger, is both foolish
and wicked in such a Nation as ours, and past experience
has shown that such fatuity in refusing to recognize or
prepare for any crisis in advance is usually succeeded by
a mad panic of hysterical fear once the crisis has actually
arrived."

HIGHEST POINT OF EFFICIENCY NECESSARY

"The Army has been reduced to the minimum allowed
by law. It is very small for the size of the Nation, and
most certainly should be kept at the highest point of effi-
ciency."

GENERAL STAFF FOR THE ARMY URGED

"I urgently call your attention to the need of passing a
bill providing for a general staff and for the reorganiza-
tion of the supply department on the lines of the bill pro-
posed by the Secretary of War last year."

TO STAND STILL MEANS TO GO BACK

(Third annual message to Congress, Dec. 7, 1903.)
"I heartily congratulate the Congress upon the steady
progress in building up the American Navy. We can not
afford a let-up in this great work. To stand still means
to go back."

GENERAL STAFF SECURED

"The effect of the law providing a general staff for the
Army and for the more effective use of the National
Guard has been excellent. Great improvement has been
made in the efficiency of our Army in recent years.
We should not rest satisfied with what has been done."
(Fourth annual message to Congress, Dec. 4, 1904.)
"I most earnestly recommend that there be no halt in
the work of upbuilding the American Navy."

398

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

POTENT FOR PEACE BECAUSE NOT AFRAID OF WAR

"Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent
because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations
upon behalf of peace would neither receive nor deserve
the slightest attention if we were impotent to make them
good.

It is very important that the officers of the Army should
be accustomed to handle their men in masses, as it is
also important that the National Guard of the several
States should be accustomed to actual field maneuvering,
especially in connection with the regulars."

EFFICIENCY ALWAYS EFFICIENCY

(Fifth annual message to Congress, Dec. 5, 1905.)

"We have most wisely continued for a number of years
to build up our Navy, and it has now reached a fairly
high standard of efficiency. This standard of efficiency
must not only be maintained, but increased.

We now have a very small Army — indeed, one well-
nigh infinitesimal when compared with the army of any
other large nation.

I do not believe that any army in the world has a better
average of enlisted men or a better type of junior officer,
but the Army should be trained to act effectively in mass."

(Sixth annual message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1906.)

"The United States Navy is the surest guarantee of
peace which this country possesses.

I do not ask that we increase our Navy. I ask merely
that it be maintained at its present strength, and this can
be done only if we replace the obsolete outworn ships by
new and good ones, the equals of any afloat in any navy.

In both the Army and Navy there is urgent need that
everything possible should be done to maintain the high-
est standard for the personnel, alike as regards the offi-
cers and the enlisted men."

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

SWISS SYSTEM A MODEL

"The little Republic of Switzerland offers us an excel-
lent example in all matters connected with building up
an efficient citizen soldiery."

FOUR BATTLESHIPS A YEAR URGED

(Seventh annual message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1907.)

"To build one battleship of the best and most advanced
type a year would hardly keep our fleet up to its present
force. This is not enough. In my judgment we should
this year provide for four battleships.

Again and again in the past our little Regular Army
has rendered service literally vital to the country and it
may at any time have to do so in the future.

Its standard of efficiency and instruction is higher now
than ever in the past. But it is too small. There are not
enough officers, and it is impossible to secure enough
enlisted men."

EXTRA OFFICERS FOR THE ARMY NEEDED

"We should maintain in peace a fairly complete skele-
ton of a large army.

In particular it is essential that we should possess a
number of extra officers trained in peace to perform effi-
ciently the duties urgently required upon the breaking out
of war."

From public utterances made by Col. Roosevelt at vari-
ous points throughout the country during the same period,
the following instructive citations are taken, my desire
being to have Secretary Garrison's information thorough
and complete :

TOO LATE TO PREPARE AFTER WAR BEGINS

(Address as Assistant Secretary of the Navy before the
Naval War College, June, 1897.)

400

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

"We must make up our minds once for all to the fact
that it is too late to make ready for war when the fight
is once begun.

There must be adequate preparation for conflict, if
conflict is not to mean disaster. Furthermore, this prep-
aration must take the shape of an efficient fighting navy."

A BOLD FRONT MAKES FOR PEACE

"In public as in private life, a bold front tends to insure
peace and not strife.

If we possess a formidable navy, small is the chance,
indeed, that we shall ever be dragged into a war to uphold
the Monroe Doctrine. If we do not possess such a navy,
war may be forced on us at any time."

NOT IN THE INTEREST OF WAR BUT OF PEACE

"We ask that the work of upbuilding the Navy and of
putting the United States where it should be put among
the maritime powers go forward without a break. We
ask this not in the interest of war, but in the interest of
peace."

PREPAREDNESS NEVER A MENACE TO PEACE

"In all our history there has never been a time when
preparedness for war was any menace to peace.

On the contrary, again and again we have owed peace
to the fact that we were prepared for war."

IF THE NAVY FAILS, DEFEAT FOLLOWS

(Address to the graduating class, Naval Academy, An-
napolis, May 2, 1902.)

"We all of us earnestly hope that the occasion for war
may never arise, but if it has to come, then this Nation
must win ; and in winning the prime factor must of neces-
sity be the United States Navy. If the Navy fails us,
then we are doomed to defeat."

ONLY THE SHOTS THAT HIT COUNT

"In battle the only shots that count are those that hit,
401

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

and marksmanship is a matter of long practice and intel-
ligent reasoning."

EFFICIENCY DEPENDS UPON PREPARATION

"A navy's efficiency in a war depends mainly upon its
preparedness at the outset of that war. We are not to
be excused as a nation if there is not such preparedness
of our Navy."

PREPAREDNESS ALONE COMMANDS RESPECT

(Speech at Chamber of Commerce banquet, New
York, Nov. n, 1902.)

"We need to keep in a condition of preparedness, espe-
cially as regards our Navy, not because we want war, but
because we desire to stand with those whose plea for
peace is listened to with respectful attention."

PREPARATION WON AT MANILA

(Speech at San Francisco, May 14, 1903.)

"Remember that after the war has begun it is too late
to improvise a navy. A naval war is two-thirds settled in
advance, at least two-thirds, because it is mainly settled
by the preparation which has gone on for years preceding
its outbreak. We won at Manila because the shipbuilders
of the country, under the wise provisions of Congress, had
for 15 years before been preparing the Navy."

(Speech in Brooklyn, May 30, 1905.)

"If our Navy is good enough, we have a long career of
peace before us. The only likelihood of trouble ever com-
ing to us as a Nation will arise if we let our Navy become
too small or inefficient."

AN INEFFICIENT WARSHIP A MENACE TO THE NATIONAL

HONOR

"Every warship which is not first class in efficiency be-
comes in battle not a help to the Nation, but a menace to
the national honor."

402

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

NAVY'S PRIME USE TO AVERT WAR

(Speech at the banquet of the National Convention for
the Extension of the Foreign Commerce of the United
States, Washington, Jan. 16, 1907.)

"Remember, gentlemen, that the prime use of the United
States Navy is to avert war. The United States Navy
is the cheapest insurance Uncle Sam has. It is the surest
guaranty against our ever being drawn into war ; and the
guaranty is effective in proportion as the Navy is effi-
cient."

A MAKESHIFT NAVY IMPOSSIBLE

(Speech at Cairo, 111., Oct. 3, 19x57.)
"It is utterly impossible to improvise a makeshift navy
under conditions of modern warfare."

NAVY MUST BE BUILT IN TIME OF PEACE

"The Navy must be built and all its training given in
time of peace. When once war has broken out it is too
late to do anything."

NO FINER MATERIAL FOR VOLUNTEER SOLDIERY ANYWHERE

(Speech at Fargo, N. Dak., Apr. 7, 1903.)

"I believe that no other great country has such fine
natural material for volunteer soldiers as we have, and it
is the obvious duty of the Nation and of the States to
make such provision as will enable the volunteer soldiery
to be organized with all possible rapidity and efficiency
in time of war; and, furthermore, to help in every way
the National Guard in time of peace."

It is quite plain from these various utterances in mes-
sages and addresses that Col. Roosevelt has been advo-
cating for nearly 20 years the same kind of efficient army
and navy as he is advocating to-day.

"What I ask for," he said recently, "is a big efficient
navy, and a small efficient army of a quarter of a million

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

men, and back of the Army a nation of freemen trained
to the use of arms."

So also with the danger of militarism and other argu-
ments of the peace-at-any-price advocates. His opinions
of these to-day are the same that he has always held, as
a few citations will show :

NO NATION MORE FREE FROM MILITARISM THAN OURS

(Annual message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1907.)

"Not only there is not now, but there never has been,

any other nation in the world so wholly free from the

evils of militarism as is ours."

FOOLISH DENOUNCERS OF IT RARE

"There are, of course, foolish people who denounce any
care of the Army or Navy as militarism, but I do not
think that these people are numerous.

Declamation against militarism has no mo»e serious
place in an earnest and intelligent movement for right-
eousness in this country than declamation against the
worship of Baal or Ashtaroth."

LESSONS OF THE CIVIL WAR

(Speech before the Hamilton Club, Apr. 10, 1899.)

"If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed
that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife
the worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief,
we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives; we
would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars.

Moreover, besides saving all the blood and treasure we
then lavished, we would have prevented the heartbreak
of many women, the dissolution of many homes, and we
would have spared the country those months of gloom
and shame when it seemed as if our Armies marched only
to defeat.

We could have avoided all this suffering simply by
shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we

404

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

would have shown that we were weaklings and that we
were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth.
Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the
men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln and bore sword
or rifle in the Armies of Grant and Lee ! Let us, the chil-
dren of the men who proved themselves equal to the
mighty days — let us, the children of the men who carried
the great Civil War to a triumphant conclusion, praise
the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace
were rejected ; that the suffering and loss, the blackness
of sorrow and despair, were unflinchingly faced and the
years of strife endured; for in the end the slave was
freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American Re-
public placed once more as a helmeted queen among
nations."

PROFESSIONAL NONCOMBATANTS HARMFUL

(From Life of Thomas H. Benton, written in 1887.)
"A class of professional noncombatants is as hurtful
to the healthy growth of a nation as a class of fire eaters,
for a weakness or folly is nationally as bad as a vice, or
worse. No man who is not willing to bear arms and to
fight for his rights can give a good reason why he should
be entitled to the privilege of living in a free community."

PEACE-AT-ANY-PRICE MEN COST BLOOD AND WEALTH

(From the "War with the United States, 1812-1815,"
written for the English History of the Royal Navy in
1897.)

"Both Britain and America have produced men of the
'peace-at-any-price' pattern, and in America, in one great
crisis at least, these men cost the Nation more in blood
and wealth than the political leaders most recklessly indif-
ferent to war have ever cost it."

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

PEACE SECURED BY AN UPHOLDER OF JUST WAR

(Letter to Carl Schurz, Sept. 8, 1905, published in
Autobiography. )

"I thank you for your congratulations [upon the con-
clusion of peace between Japan and Russia]. If I had
been known as one of the conventional type of peace
advocates, I could have done nothing whatever in bring-
ing about peace now, I would be powerless in the future
to accomplish anything, and I would not have been able
to help confer the boons upon Cuba, the Philippines,
Porto Rico, and Panama, brought about by our action
therein.

If this country had not fought the Spanish War, if
we had failed to take the action we did about Panama,
all mankind would have been the loser."

FRIGHTFUL CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNJUST PEACE

"While the Turks were butchering the Armenians the
European powers kept the peace, and thereby added a
burden of infamy to the nineteenth century, for in keep-
ing the peace a greater number of lives were lost than in
any European war since Napoleon, and these lives were
those of women and children as well as of men; while
the moral degradation, the brutality inflicted and endured,
the aggregate hideous wrong done, surpassed that of any
war of which we have record in modern times."

PARTIAL DISARMAMENT CALAMITOUS

"Unjust war is dreadful; a just war may be the high-
est duty. To have the best nations, the free and civilized
nations, disarm and leave the despotisms and barbar-
isms with great military force would be a calamity com-
pared to which the calamities caused by all the wars of
the nineteenth century would be trivial."

HIGH PURPOSE WITHOUT POWER USELESS

(In the Outlook, September 9, 1911.)
406

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

"Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our com-
bining power with high purpose; and high purpose by
itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect
is lacking."

TRUE LOVERS OF PEACE

"In the history of our country the peace advocates who
treat peace as more than righteousness will never be,
and never have been, of service, either to the nation or to
mankind.

The true lovers of peace, the men who have really
helped onward the movement for peace, have been those
who followed, even though afar off, in the footsteps of
Washington and Lincoln and stood for righteousness as
the supreme end of national life."

WHAT PACIFISM HAS DONE FOR CHINA

(In the Outlook, November 14, 1911.)

"A complete absence of militarism in China and China's
effort to rely purely on pacific measures in dealing with
all foreign powers have not only caused it to lose various
Provinces to various foreign powers within the last few
decades, but have had not the smallest effect in saving
it from tyranny, misgovernment, and the most far-
reaching economic misery at home ; and, moreover, have
had the effect of depriving it of means of keeping order
within its own boundaries."

Col. Roosevelt's poor . opinion of the usefulness of
arbitration treaties when unbacked by force is not the
outgrowth of developments of the present war, but, like
his opinions on the other vital questions of national pol-
icy, is a matter of long-standing conviction:

ARBITRATION TREATIES USELESS UNLESS BACKED BY FORCE

(Address to the graduating class of the Naval Acad-
emy, Annapolis, January 30, 1905.)

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

"The adoption of those (arbitration) treaties by them-
selves would not bring peace. We are a good many
years short of the millennium yet; and for the present
and immediate future we can rest assured that the word
of the man who is suspected of desiring peace because
he is afraid of war will count for little."

RELIANCE OF A FIRST-CLASS FLEET SAFER

(Address, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, before
the Naval War College, June, 1897.)

"Arbitration is an excellent thing, but ultimately those
who wish to see this country at peace with foreign na-
tions will be wise if they place reliance upon a first-
class fleet of first-class battleships rather than on any
arbitration treaty which the wit of men can devise."

(Address at dinner of the Sons of the American Revo-
lution, New York, March 17, 1905.)

"I know one excellent gentleman in Congress who said
he preferred arbitration to battleships. So do I. But
suppose the other man does not? I want to have the
battleships as a provocative for arbitration so far as
the other man is concerned.

We have now got our Navy up to a good point. We
have built and are building 40 armored ships. For
a year or two, or two or three years, to come what we
need to do is to provide for the personnel of those ships
and to secure the very highest standard of efficiency in
handling them, singly and in squadrons; above all, for
handling the great guns."

ARMED STRENGTH ALONE MAKES ARBITRATION
SUCCESSFUL

(Annual message to Congress, December 3, 1906.)
"The chance for the settlement of disputes peacefully,
by arbitration, now depends mainly upon the possession

408

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

by the nations that mean to do right of sufficient armed
strength to make their purpose effective."

LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS IMPOSSIBLE

(Annual message to Congress, December 3, 1907.)
"It is evident (from the failure of The Hague confer-
ence to take action on the limitation of armament) that
it is folly for this Nation to base any hope of securing
peace on any international agreement as to the limitation
of armaments. Such being the fact, it would be most
unwise to stop the upbuilding of our Navy."

NO SAFEGUARD AGAINST VIOLATION

(Address before the Nobel Prize Committee, Chris-
tiania, Norway, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, May
5, I9io.)

"All really civilized communities should have effective
arbitration treaties among themselves. I believe that
these treaties can cover almost all questions liable to
arise between such nations, if they are drawn with the
explicit agreement that each contracting party will re-
spect the other's territory and its absolute sovereignty
within that territory, and the equally explicit agreement
that (aside from the very rare cases where the nation's
honor is vitally concerned) all other possible subjects
of controversy will be submitted to arbitration. Such a
treaty would insure peace unless one party deliberately
violated it. Of course, as yet, there is no adequate safe-
guard against such deliberate violation, but the estab-
lishment of a sufficient number of these treaties would
go a long way toward creating a world opinion which
would finally find expression in the provision of methods
to forbid or punish such violation."

NO SINGLE POWER CAN LIMIT ARMAMENTS

"Something should be done as soon as possible to check
the growth of armaments, especially naval armaments,

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

by international agreement. No one power could or
should act by itself ; for it is eminently undesirable, from
the standpoint of the peace of righteousness, that a
power which really does believe in peace should place it-
self at the mercy of some rival which may at bottom
have no such belief and no intention of acting on it.

Finally, it would be a master stroke if those great pow-
ers honestly bent on peace would form a league of peace,
not only to keep the peace among themselves but to
prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by
others."

NEED OF AN INTERNATIONAL POLICE POWER

"The supreme difficulty in connection with developing
the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of
any executive power, of any police power, to enforce
the decrees of the court.

Each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself
until the establishment of some form of international
police power, competent and willing to prevent violence
as between nations.

As things are now, such power to command peace
throughout the world could only be assured by some com-
bination between those great nations which sincerely
desire peace and have no thought themselves of com-
mitting aggressions."

WILSON'S LOST OPPORTUNITY

"The combination might at first be only to secure peace
within certain definite limits and certain definite condi-
tions, but the ruler or statesman who should bring about
such a combination would have earned his place in his-
tory for all time and his title to the gratitude of all
mankind."

PAPER TREATIES USELESS IF NOT BACKED BY FORCE

(In the Outlook, November 4, 1911.)
410

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

"This war (between Italy and Turkey) proves the ut-
ter inefficiency of paper treaties when they are unbacked
by force ; the utter folly of those who believe that these
paper treaties accomplish any useful purpose in the
present stage of the world's development when there
is no force behind them; and, finally, not merely the
folly but the iniquity of making treaties which there is
no real intention of putting into effect."

WICKED TO MAKE TREATIES SURE TO BE BROKEN

"It would be not merely foolish but wicked for us as
a Nation to agree to arbitrate any dispute that affects
our vital interest or our independence or honor, be-
cause such an agreement would amount on our part to
a covenant to abandon our duty, to an agreement to
surrender the rights of the American people about un-
known matters at unknown times in the future.

Such an agreement would be wicked if kept, and yet
to break it — as it undoubtedly would be broken if the
occasion arose — would be only less shameful than keep-
ing it."

Even on the subject of hyphenated Americans, the
views which Col. Roosevelt has been expressing since
the outbreak of the European War are not new. He
uttered the same sentiments more than 20 years ago and
has reiterated them frequently since.

HYPHENATED AMERICANS NOT DESIRABLE

(From "True Americanism," published April, 1894.)
"We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes
an American. We have no use for the German or Irish-
man who remains such. We do not wish German-
Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in
our social and political life; we want only Americans,
and, provided they are such, we do not care whether

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FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry.
We have no room in any healthy American community
for a German- American vote or an Irish- American vote,
and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into
any party platform with the purpose of catching such
a vote. We have no room for any people who do not
act and vote simply as Americans and as nothing else."

ALL AMERICANS IN ROUGH RIDERS

(Speech at New Mexico, May 5, 1903.)
"There were men in my regiment (in the Spanish War)
who themselves were born in England, Ireland, Ger-
many, or Scandinavia, but there was not a man, no
matter what his creed, what his birthplace, what his
ancestry, who was not an American and nothing else."

GOOD CITIZENSHIP THE TEST

(Speech at Butte, Mont, May 27, 1903.)

"If we are to preserve this Republic as it was founded,
as it was handed down to us by the men of sixty-one
to sixty-five, and as it is and will be, we must draw
the line never between section and section, never between
creed and creed, thrice never between class and class;
but along the line of conduct, the line that separates
the good citizen wherever he may be found from the
bad citizen wherever he may be found."

GOOD AMERICANISM NOT A MATTER OF BIRTH

(Message to Congress, December 6, 1904.)
"Good Americanism is a matter of heart, of conscience,
of lofty aspiration, of sound common sense, but not of
birthplace or of creed. The medal of honor, the high-
est prize to be won by those who serve in the Army
and the Navy of the United States, decorates men born
here, and it also decorates men born in Great Britain
and Ireland, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in France, and
doubtless in other countries also."

412

RECORD ON PREPAREDNESS

ALL AMERICANS

(Speech at dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Pat-
rick, New York, March 17, 1905.)

"My fellow countrymen, I have spoken to-night espe-
cially of what has been done for this Nation of ou/s
by men of Irish blood. But, after all, in speaking to
you or to any body of my fellow citizens, no matter
from what Old World country they themselves or their
forefathers may have come, the great thing is to re-
member that we are all of us Americans. Let us keep
our pride in the stocks from which we have sprung,
but let us show that pride, not by holding aloof from
one another, least of all by preserving the Old World
jealousies and bitternesses, but by joining in a spirit of
generous rivalry to see which can do most for our great
common country."

Finally, in regard to the Monroe Doctrine and the
necessity of upholding it by force in case of need, Col.
Roosevelt has for years held and advocated no uncer-
tain views.

THE MONROE DOCTRINE ONLY EFFECTIVE IF UPHELD BY

FORCE

(At Augusta, Me., August 26, 1902.)

"The Monroe Doctrine is simply a statement of our
very firm belief that on this continent the nations now
existing here must be le'ft to work out their own des*
tinies among themselves and that the continent is not
longer to be regarded as colonizing ground for any Euro-
pean nation.

The only power on the continent that can make that
doctrine effective is, of course, ourselves, for in the
world as it is, gentlemen, the nation which advances a
given doctrine likely to interfere in any way with other

413

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

nations must possess power to back it up if she wishes
the doctrine to be respected."

BLUSTER WITHOUT FORCE WORSE THAN ABANDONMENT

(Speech at Chicago, April 2, 1903.)

"I believe in the Monroe Doctrine with all my heart
and soul. I am convinced that the immense majority
of our fellow countrymen so believe in it; but I would
infinitely prefer to see us abandon it than to see us put
it forward and bluster about it, and yet fail to build
up the efficient fighting strength which in the last resort
can alone make it respected by any strong foreign power
whose interest it may ever happen to be to violate it."
"SPEAK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG STICK"

"There is a homely old adage which runs : 'Speak softly
and carry a big stick; you will go far.' If the Ameri-
can Nation will speak softly, and yet build, and keep
at a pitch of the highest training, a thoroughly efficient
Navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far."

414

UA Roosevelt, Theodore

23 Fear God and take your own

R7 part

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